


Resonant Frequency

by tastewithouttalent



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies), Soul Eater
Genre: Bickering, Childhood Trauma, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Physical Disability, Teaching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-07
Updated: 2019-01-25
Packaged: 2019-08-28 05:02:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 35,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16717036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tastewithouttalent/pseuds/tastewithouttalent
Summary: "The voice that breaks into the rhythm of Hermann’s deliberate speech is far from soft, this time. Hermann can feel his entire body tense painfully on irritation even before the door that has just been flung open has hit the wall." After a disastrous failure as a young meister, Hermann has spent a decade without the weapon partner he used to dream of finding, but compatibility is hard to predict and desperate times call for desperate matches.





	1. Habitual

“So as you can see,” Hermann declares, dragging the line of his chalk sharply across the blackboard to underline his last point. “The most important step when attempting Resonance is to understand your partner.” He braces the cane at his side hard against the floor -- a habit years old, now, formed around too many near misses and outright falls when he first began pacing the smooth-polished tile in this classroom -- and leans into the support as he pivots around his bad leg to consider his class. “Any questions on what we’ve just covered?”

The class stares back at him. Hermann long since gave up any attempts to keep his audience of teenaged meisters occupied for the course of the lectures he gives; he doesn’t have any delusions with regards to his own charisma, and as much as theory is necessary before practical attempts he knows too well how many of the students consider his courses no more than the mandatory penance they have to suffer before they go on to the exciting hands-on courses in the afternoon. Any effort Hermann makes at being friendly or charming inevitably falls flat, and costs him far more by way of discomfort and energy besides; he gave those up years hence, settling instead for what comfort text and the chalk-dry sound of his own voice echoing off a silent room can grant. He isn’t expecting an answer from the half-dozen students in the mostly-empty rows of desks before him; it’s enough that they are listening at all, rather than drowsing over their half-written notes. Hermann is already taking a breath to go on speaking with no more than his perfunctory request for questions when the unthinkable happens and a hand lifts up from the farthest corner of the classroom.

“Ah,” Hermann blurts, caught out from his usual pattern of unthinking speech by this unprecedented interruption. He blinks and tilts his head down so he can look out over the top of his glasses and get a better view of the distant face instead of the close-up text he usually spends all day considering. “Right. Miss Mori.”

The student in question lowers her arm with deliberate care to set her hand at the front edge of her desk. She looks far from asleep; there’s an intensity in her eyes that Hermann has never seen absent, as if it’s her goal to see through the world around her and lay claim to the inner workings of existence so she can bend it to her will. Hermann feels old when he meets Mako Mori’s gaze, as if he can feel all the aches and pains of his years hunched over a desk in clearer contrast with the vibrant vitality Mako carries in even her precisely correct posture and the clarity of her words. Hermann can’t remember another student he’s liked as well as Mako in the last ten years he’s been teaching.

“Resonance is most effective when the two partners understand each other,” Mako says, reciting back Hermann’s own words in the deceptively soft tone she always speaks in. “What can a meister do in the event that she does not fully understand her weapon partner?”

Hermann blinks. “Yes,” he says, acknowledgment of the question more than an answer to it. “Well.” He tightens his hold on the handle of the cane at his side and lifts his head, straightening his posture until he can feel the line of his shoulders like armor, as if the effort to stand up straight is enough to brace him against this particular subject. “Spending time together is greatly beneficial, of course, but insufficient on its own. Both parties must make a conscious effort to bridge what gap may exist between them, as there is always some measure of difference between even intimate friends or close siblings.” His words are fitting into a rhythm, falling back into the comfort that comes with recitation. “There are a variety of exercises a weapon and meister can undertake that can--”

“Hermann!” The voice that breaks into the rhythm of Hermann’s deliberate speech is far from soft, this time. It’s loud, piercing, almost a shout enough to echo off the walls of the classroom; Hermann can feel his entire body tense painfully on irritation even before the door that has just been flung open has hit the wall, surely hard enough to leave a dent. “Hey, Hermann, you’ll never believe what we just pulled off, it’s incredible.”

Hermann’s fingers cramp on the handle of his cane, he’s gripping it so hard. “I have asked you not to refer to me that way in front of my students,” he grates out past gritted teeth. When he turns this time it’s with more aggression than focus, swinging himself around the fixed point of his cane to turn the full force of his glare on the intruder who has just interrupted his lecture. “And I have _demanded_ that that door remain locked, Newton.”

Newton Geiszler glances back over his shoulder at the door that connects his own classroom and Hermann’s space, only just now swinging back to latch into place in his wake. “That door?” he asks, lifting a hand to gesture.

Hermann would swear he can hear his teeth creaking, he’s pressing them together so hard. “ _Yes_ ,” he says. “If there aren’t rules in place to govern your behavior--”

“Rules were made to be broken,” Newton declares, waving his hand to sweep aside the last of Hermann’s statement unspoken. “No one here minds. Do you?” as he turns out to the handful of silent students Hermann has been speaking to for the last fifty minutes.

They’re not silent now. They speak as one, offering up a resounding negative in answer to Newton’s question. Newton beams at them, gesturing with both hands as if to urge them to greater volume, as if this response is adulation for himself personally rather than just the repressed energy of bored students. Even Mako is fighting back a smile at the back of the room, looking more charmed than judgmental. Hermann feels very tired.

“We’ll resume this on Thursday,” he says, speaking loudly so the words will carry. He’s not sure his attempt to regain control over his class is successful, but at least the flurry of movement that follows comes at his own permission rather than Newton’s. Hermann doesn’t want to find out if his class is willing to ignore his authority and leave at the other’s allowance. “Read chapter fourteen in the text and come prepared to discuss it, as well as the follow-up to Miss Mori’s question.” That gets a soft noise of protest, as an evident hope for forgetfulness is dashed, but Hermann doesn’t have the attention to spare for his students when another source is so thoroughly demanding the whole of his focus. He turns aside from the disarray that comes with the motion of his audience and leans instead into a forward stride to span the distance between himself and Newton just turning away from his open-armed consideration of Hermann’s class.

“ _Newton_ ,” Hermann hisses, as softly as he can manage in consideration of their audience but with enough teeth on the sound to draw Newton’s head into a turn to offer him the other’s gaze instead. “How many _times_ must I tell you not to _interrupt my classes_.”

Newton glances out at the fast-emptying space. “Your classes?” he says, with absolutely no indication of the forced restraint Hermann is holding onto his own speech. “ _This_?” He turns with such ease that he makes the motion of swinging around to face Hermann nearly as sloppy as the general disarray of his hair -- rumpled by the absent shove of wide-spread fingers -- and his button-up shirt, whose sleeves are dragged up to uneven length around his elbows. “My dear Hermann, six students does not a class make. Then again if I were one of ‘em I’d probably be playing hooky too.”

“There are eight,” Hermann says in a fit of ill-advised accuracy. Newton raises an eyebrow over the plastic rim of his glasses and Hermann reaches to drag his own off his face and leave them dangling from their chain around his neck, just for the relief of taking the decisive action that his bad leg won’t let his feet make. “It is lucky for us both that you are not blessed with the skills of a meister.”

Newton makes a weird sound in the back of his throat, something with the force of a laugh but the edge of a sob. “Sure, yeah, that makes two of us.”

Hermann reels back so sharply he has to stumble to catch his weight on his good leg to keep from falling. It’s a minor movement, barely a half-step to steady himself before he recovers, but Newton flinches anyway, grimacing as he ducks his head to scrub his hand up through the disaster he’s made of his hair. “Shit. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have--I talk too much, Herms, you know I do, I didn’t mean--”

“Get out.” Hermann isn’t trying to soften his tone, isn’t trying to ease it back from the hearing of nonexistent eavesdroppers, but the words still come out in almost a murmur that makes Newton flinch more than the other’s temper ever does.

“Sorry,” he says again, and takes a step backwards as if Hermann might be about to use the cane at his side as a weapon instead of the necessary support it truly is. “I--” He makes a face, grimacing through several iterations of a frown before he shakes his head and backs away outright. “See ya.” And he turns to stride away towards the door that’s swung shut so he can wrench it open again. There’s a roar of sound from the other side, the chatter and laughter and conversation of dozens of entirely unrestrained students; Newton leans forward as he comes through the door, shouting something that even Hermann can’t understand as encouragement or judgment. Whatever it is, it goes unheard or unheeded before the door slides shut to latch behind the other once more and leave Hermann alone in the silence of his empty classroom again.

Hermann can feel his shoulders give way, as if all the strength in his spine has melted with the absence of an audience for whom to stand tall. His knee throbs, voicing protest to the stiff propriety of his stance as much as for the hour he’s spent on his feet; Hermann turns away from the now-closed door to retreat to his desk, where he can lean heavily against the support of the edge before beginning the process of lowering himself to sit at the chair behind him. It’s not a particularly comfortable piece of furniture, cast in the same dark wood that Hermann uses to outfit the rest of his classroom, but just the fact of sitting down surges relief through his knee and the strain of his thigh, and for a moment Hermann is content to lean his cane at the edge of his desk and duck in to breathe through the ache that comes with the easing of the persona he draws on for the duration of the classes that sometimes seem as endless to him as they must to his students.

Newton will be back. Newton always comes back, as regular as that dull ache that grinds itself into Hermann’s knee after too long standing. But for now Hermann has his classroom, and his quiet, and the pain so long-held it fits under the strain of his breathing closer than a friend.


	2. Prediction

Hermann does not like Newton.

He’s very clear on this point. Newton Geiszler is loud, and obnoxious, and has absolutely no concept of the idea of personal space or professional distance or, in fact, anything that Hermann has come to value in the quiet rhythm his life has taken on. Or at least that it would have taken on, without the inconvenience of the colleague who seems to treat the door between their respective classrooms as an open invitation instead of a deliberate barrier and who offers commentary and unasked-for advice as rapidly as anything else. Every interruption sets Hermann’s teeth tighter against each other and twists another knot in against the already dug-in ache at his spine, until coming in to the Academy each morning feels like the opening salvo of an endless, unflinching war waged in the space between his own silent classroom and the tumult of that matched to the enthusiasm of the other man.

Hermann doesn’t seek out Newton’s company. Bad enough to have to see him as a necessary component of arriving at work and moving through the trajectory of the day; Hermann would be glad enough to make his way back to his own apartment in silence, just for the relief of returning to something like peace for his thoughts after the chaos that must follow dozens of students all trying to learn how to navigate their own lives as much as their relationships. But what Hermann wants seems to carry very little weight at all in his life, despite the relatively reasonable assumption that it might; and so it is that no sooner has his last student left for the day than the door to the adjourning room comes open with only slightly less force than it did earlier in the morning.

“What do you think of that new Raleigh kid?” Newton asks in lieu of a more appropriate greeting. He doesn’t wait for any kind of a response from Hermann before striding into the classroom as easily as if it’s his own. “He’s got some backbone to him.”

“I have no idea to whom you’re referring,” Hermann tells him, only sparing a glance up over his glasses to offer Newton a frown the other doesn’t see for the motion he’s making towards the inclined rows of seats ringing the chalkboard at the front of the room. “Do you generally do away with all formalities of introduction, or is it just my life you enjoy invading without so much as a good afternoon?”

“The new weapon, man,” Newton says rather than answering Hermann’s mostly-rhetorical question. “You’ve got to keep up on these things, what kind of a teacher are you if you can’t even be bothered to learn the names of your incoming students?”

“You just said yourself he’s a weapon,” Hermann says. Newton doesn’t look back to appreciate the glare Hermann is fixing on his shoulders; he’s in the process of climbing the overlarge stairs that form the rows of desks around the room, half-leaping up them as if his energy is such that he can’t restrain himself from the action. It makes Hermann feel tired just watching him. “I’m unlikely to ever have him in one of my classes, Newton, I am a _meister_ instructor.”

“Whatever,” Newton says. He reaches the top of the stairs and turns to pace down the curve of the desks that form the back row of the space. “That’s your problem, you know, you think of meisters and weapons as two separate groups when they’re really--” as he lifts his hands out in front of him to interlace his fingers, “--a single entity.”

“I am aware of the fundamental principle of partnering,” Hermann informs the man pacing against the back edge of his classroom. “My lack of hands-on experience has no impact on my grasp of theoretical concepts.”

“Not what I was trying to say,” Newton says, lifting both hands high as he turns to face Hermann and keeps moving sideways along the edge of the row. “I’m not touching that subject again, forget it, no way.” He shakes his head and draws one hand over his mouth to mime himself to a silence that utterly fails to materialize. “It’s not like I’m any better off than you anyway.” Hermann would like to argue with that -- the difference between them is rather more substantive than the simple fact of lacking a partner -- but Newton is coming back down the stairs now, moving so quickly Hermann flinches in alarm for the possibility of a slip and fall. “I’m just saying you act like the weapons have cooties or something. Just because you don’t teach them doesn’t mean you shouldn’t care about them at all.”

“I _care_ ,” Hermann snaps back. “Maintaining a level of professional distance between myself and my students has no bearing on my emotional investment in their well-being.”

Newton rolls his eyes. “Oh man, you’re right, I don’t know _why_ I didn’t see your _emotional investment_ before now.”

Hermann sets his teeth together, feeling his cheeks flush hot with something between embarrassment and anger. “I don’t appreciate your mockery, Newton.”

Newton jumps down from the last step to the slick-polished floor of the classroom. “And I don’t appreciate you calling me that, so I guess we’ll both just make do with what we have.”

“It is your _name_ ,” Hermann reminds him, with as much edge on his tone as if there’s any chance Newton has actually forgotten this basic fact. “Your insistence on that ridiculous nickname is more befitting one of your students than a grown man.”

“You think weapons give up their Academy names when they graduate?” Newton comes towards Hermann, approaching from the other side of the desk so he can lean in and brace both hands against the edge of the support. “Come on, dude, you know you’d have gone by _Dr. Gottlieb_ \--” his tone as much as the air quotes he appends making the title mocking more than sincere, “--if you had had the chance.”

“Which I did not,” Hermann says, and collects his folder of papers against his chest so he can turn and begin his slow process towards the door. “Which renders your entire point an exercise in hypotheticals.”

“Hypotheticals, yeah.” Newton straightens from the edge of the desk to take the lead towards the door; even if Hermann wished to protest this, his own struggling pace hardly leaves him with the ability to engage in a competition of speed with the other. “Totally different than my _actual_ weapon name. It’s on the documentation and everything.” He grabs for the handle of the door and pushes it open so he can take the lead into the hallway outside before turning to speak back over his shoulder. “It’s just a nickname. Would the impropriety of calling me Newt kill you on the spot or something?”

“We are colleagues,” Hermann tells him as he makes his way across the classroom to the door Newton is holding open. “I am hardly going to begin referring to you with the pretension of teenage drinking buddies.”

Hermann is close enough to see the dramatic eyeroll this statement wins from Newton. “Oh my _god_ ,” he groans, and lets the door slide free of his hold as Hermann makes his way around the other’s shoulders and out into the open space of the hallway. “All I’m asking is for you to call me something other than _Newton_ , you make me sound like somebody’s grandfather.”

“Indeed,” Hermann says, striding down the hallway with the tap of his cane as the rhythm by which his own steps and Newton’s fall into alignment. “So long as you insist on calling me by my first name in front of my students we will be forced to remain at an impasse.”

“You mean _you’ll_ keep us at an impasse,” Newton clarifies. “Because it’s on you, you’re the one who won’t take a hint. A statement. A demand, really.”

Hermann scoffs a laugh. “I hardly think it’s _my_ ability to read the situation that is at fault here, _Newton_.”

Newton throws his hands up. “Fine! Fine. Have it your way, Hermann. Herms. Dr. Mann.”

“You sound idiotic,” Hermann informs him. “I’ll thank you to not mangle my name with your ill-advised attempts at humor.”

“You’re as cheerless as ever,” Newton tells him. “I’m beginning to see why students drop your class in droves. It must be torture to actually sit through an entire session with you lecturing.”

“At least they learn something at all,” Hermann replies. “From what I hear _your_ class might as well be recess for all that you cover.”

Newton handwaves this aside. “They’re weapons,” he declares. “They have to get practice transforming, how else will they ever be ready to take on an enemy in the field?”

“They ought to be practicing with their _partners_ ,” Hermann growls. “Not playing around solo.”

Hermann’s expecting Newton to push back at this, to laugh or mock his point out of importance before steering them into another maddeningly circular argument. But Newton has never been predictable, even in his argumentation, and instead of pushing back he startles Hermann with one of his laughs that break from him with the speed and sound approximating a cough more than amusement.

“Yeah,” he says. “I actually agree with you on that.”

Hermann’s eyebrow lifts in spite of his intention. “My god,” he says. “It’s a miracle.”

“Yeah,” Newton says. “Don’t get used to it.” He takes a half-step forward to take the lead but it’s not to leave Hermann behind; he just skips forward by enough to turn around so he can pace backwards down the mostly-empty hallway and go on speaking with his attention on Hermann instead of his surroundings. “Where do you want to go for dinner? There’s a new Italian place a few blocks away that I’ve been thinking about trying out. Or there’s that hole-in-the-wall pizza joint near your apartment, if you feel like a slice.”

Hermann wrinkles his nose. “At this hour? It’s going to be swarmed with hold-overs from the bar next door, we’ll never be able to find a table.”

Newton shrugs. “So it’s Italian,” he says, without any visible dismay at this conclusion. “It’s right down the street, it won’t take us more than ten minutes to get there.”

Hermann leans against the support of his cane and considers the ache at his hip and the constant dull throb of hurt from his protesting knee. “This had better not be another case of your shoddy estimation skills, Newton.”

“My estimates are completely fine for most people,” Newton replies. “The fact that you want documentation in triplicate for every piece of logic is the outlier here, my dude. Sometimes you just have to go with the flow, you know? Not that you’ve ever let yourself admit that that exists. Do you _try_ to straitlace yourself, or is it just a natural result of never having any fun?”

Hermann can feel his fingers tightening on the handle of his cane with more force than is at all necessary for the task at hand. “Newton, the reason I’m asking--”

“You don’t need to worry,” Newton says, and swings around his heel to stride forward down the hallway again. “It’s on the way to your apartment.” He glances over his shoulder; the gesture indicates that he’s looking back, but the motion goes unfinished so Hermann can’t quite see the look in the other’s face before he turns away again. “You didn’t really think I was going to make you go out of your way, did you? How inconsiderate do you think I am?”

Hermann doesn’t miss a step -- the awkward pattern of his footfalls is too well-learned for emotion to interrupt him in this -- but he thinks if anything could do it it would be the almost-hurt under Newton’s voice in place of the frantic antagonism that is usually there. He ducks his head forward to frown at the floor beneath him and disguise some part of his expression while he pulls himself back towards his usual acerbic composure.

“It’s never easy to predict anything with you,” is what he finally settles on, delivering the words in something like calm as he keeps his gaze on the floor instead of up to look at Newton in front of him. “You’re hardly known for your consistency, Newton.”

Newton coughs another raw laugh. “Yeah, okay,” he says. “Coming from you I think I’m going to take that as a compliment.”

“You’re free to do whatever you wish,” Hermann says. There’s a pause of quiet, the silence of the Academy around them unbroken except by the scuff of Newton’s shoes on the floor and the click of Hermann’s cane, and then Hermann clears his throat deliberately and speaks again. “You said this was an Italian restaurant?”

“Yeah,” Newton says, leaping onto the subject change as if he was just as desperate for something else to speak to as Hermann feels himself. “It’s brand new so I don’t know if it’s any good, but I figure even bad Italian food is going to be edible, probably.”

“By your standards,” Hermann says with as much bite as he can put on the words. “I don’t find your opinion enormously reassuring on this point.” That gives Newton something to protest, which Hermann shuts down in turn, and by the time they’re stepping out of the front doors and making their way towards the near-endless flight of stairs leading down to the main city Hermann has left the strain of their brief interlude well behind him.

If Newton takes the stairs more slowly than he might if he were alone, Hermann is too occupied in maneuvering down those same to spare much attention to that fact.


	3. Recall

Something is stirring at the Academy.

This is hardly unusual. In a school filled with over a hundred students ranging in age from twelve-year-old weapons all the way up to dedicated meisters pushing against the boundary of two decades and their impending graduation, the drama that necessarily follows the advent of puberty must be enough to keep everyone at the cusp of panic at all times. Add to that half the students’ ability to turn into weapons with varying degrees of danger and self-control at a moment’s notice, and the necessary intimacy that comes of partners that live and study together, and Hermann is sometimes surprised the school doesn’t burst for the cumulative effect of contrasting personalities and desires that fill it. Hermann doesn’t involve himself with these, however much Newton may delight in playing matchmaker between his weapon students and Hermann’s meister class; it’s not something he was ever part of even when he was of an age to be caught up in it, and he has less interest in meddling now than he ever mustered for the intricacies of interactions even when he was a young student with his dreams still grand enough to include becoming a world-famous meister with a Death Weapon creation to his name. Hermann does his best to ignore the smaller dramas that flare and die as rapidly as the flirtations between the students in the hallways of the Academy, and after almost a decade of practice he has become reasonably skilled at blocking out the distraction of that same.

This is something else. Hermann’s classes are always smaller than Newton’s; a handful of students must necessarily be quieter than a class packed with nearly three dozen. But the chaos that Hermann can usually hear through the wall backing his room up against Newton’s has been absent for days, now, replaced with a kind of tension that has infected his own class as well, hunching in shoulders and shadowing usually dull gazes into concern. His students don’t look drowsy or bored now; they look preoccupied, as if their thoughts are entirely elsewhere, as if they are only going through the motions of attending class rather than truly mentally present. Even Mako is abstracted, not responding to Hermann until he has called her name twice, and even that elicits none of the roomwide amusement it might normally, even in the wake of her red-faced apology. Hermann can hardly scold his best student when the rest of the Academy is so taut on the same panic that has eclipsed Mako’s own thoughts; finally he lets his class out five minutes early, an unprecedented treat that no one comments upon, and follows the last straggler out into the hallway to make his way through the few students between classes or traveling from one to the other so he can reach the expanse of the mission board that hangs in the entryway of the Academy courtyard.

Hermann doesn’t come into the Academy this direction. The board is set up for easy reference, right there in the face of everyone who steps through the main doors and into the space of the DWMA; and so Hermann takes the back doors and comes the long way around the body of the Academy so he can enter from the side just for the excuse of avoiding facing down that wall of options for young, hopeful meisters, that board that seems to provide a list of his own failures for him to recall every time he glances at it. He tells himself it’s because his classroom is at the back of the Academy, that it’s easier to navigate through lesser-used side corridors than to wade through the chaos that the students make of the main halls; all true facts, all accurate enough to hold up to even the most arduous scrutiny, and all of them no more than weak excuses for what Hermann is really avoiding.

It’s hard to face down the mission board. Hermann doesn’t shy away from it, now that he’s here -- he hardly wants to make more of a spectacle of himself than he already is just by his presence -- but in the first moment of lifting his head to frown at the tags laid out before him he can’t make out any of the details for how much of the past breaks over him to swamp his thoughts and cloud his vision. His heart skips, his breath catching on the memory of hope, on the recollection of the first time he came through those doors and looked up at the promises of a future offered before him; and just as quickly his shoulders hunch, his grip on his cane tightening on the reminder of his own failure, of the disappointment that is all he found for himself and for those who hoped for more from him. Hermann stares at the board for a long moment, seeing into the shadows of his past as if flipping through the span of years in a rush; and then he sets his jaw, and shakes his head to free himself of bitter nostalgia, and he fixes his gaze on the board of the present instead of the memories of the past in which he was so briefly caught.

It’s difficult to see the difference, at first. It’s been so long since Hermann really looked at the mission board that he’s lost the pattern of it, the grace of glancing at a dozen tags and gaining everything he needs to know just from that; his approach is far more painstaking, now, as he gazes at the dozens of loose tags hanging in a mismatched collage all across the board. Finally he heaves a sigh, and picks a point at which to start, and begins to consider each one individually, reading over the details with deliberate intent before moving on to the next.

Hermann doesn’t know what he’s looking for. There’s a tension in the Academy, a sense of unrest so deep-seated that it has managed to override the personal concerns of dozens of teenagers in close proximity to each other; there must be some overarching reason for it, some awareness that the students are picking up on intuitively if not overtly. Hermann is hardly plugged into the rumors that flicker through the school with all the bright heat of wildfire leaping from tree to tree, but rumors must begin somewhere, and there is no information more easily shared than the missions here, set out for everyone to see as soon as they come through the front of the Academy.

Hermann loses track of time in going through the tags on the board. There are dozens of them at the best of times, more than enough to give students a wide array of opponents to take on as their skill and desire dictate; by beginning at the top Hermann started with the hardest missions, those often assigned directly to Death Weapons or similarly high-starred meisters to deal with rather than the younger or less experienced students. He’s scouring the details of each card, frowning over the lines of text as he reads before moving on to the next; he’s only halfway through the topmost row when the sound of a voice over his shoulder breaks through the hard shell of his focus to startle him back to the present.

“Kind of a weird place to get lost in a daydream.” Hermann jerks, shocked right out of composure by the words so clearly directed towards him, but he recognizes that voice, is settling himself into a scowl even as he pivots against the support of his cane to look back over his shoulder. Newton is standing just behind him, his hands set at his hips and his elbows angled wide from his body; his gaze is turned on the board instead of on Hermann, his mouth dragging onto a wide grin. “I gotta say, Herms, this is the last place I expected to run into you, and I’ve met you some pretty weird places.”

Hermann draws himself up. “I hardly think there’s anything remarkable about it,” he grates out with chill, deliberate composure. “I’m looking after the well-being of my students. The missions available to them are part of that same consideration, whether they are presently partnered or not.”

Newton lifts a hand to wave this aside like the actual fact of Hermann’s presence is a distraction hardly to be noticed. “Sure, sure,” he says. “You work here too, man, you can go wherever you want. I just mean I’ve never seen you standing around here before. Don’t you usually prefer the whole reclusive hermit schtick instead?”

Hermann snorts. “I suppose this is more to _your_ tastes,” he suggests. “Right in the middle of a crowd, where you can have as many eyes on you as possible.”

Newton cracks a laugh open in the back of his throat. “Yeah,” he says, and ducks his head to watch his foot as he scuffs his heel hard against the floor. “It’s the best I’ve got for myself, anyway.” When he looks back up it’s to gaze right past Hermann, back to the span of the board over the other’s shoulder; with his head raised at the angle it’s at the overbright illumination in the hall slides right off his glasses to leave the lenses as transparent as if they’re not there at all. “Must be nice to be stable enough to actually hold a partnership together long enough to fight a Kishin Egg or two, huh?”

Ordinarily Hermann would snap back at this. If it were anyone else, if it were any _time_ else, he thinks his spine would stiffen, his chin would lift, and he would retreat behind the chill rime of ice on his tone as a transparent cover for the hurt of the reminder Newton’s words bring with them. But the same light that leaves Newton’s glasses transparent illuminates his expression too, picking out the strain at his lips and the shadows in his eyes, where his gaze remains utterly unaffected by the attempt at humor at his mouth, and in the ungentle light Hermann can see what usually goes half-hidden in the dimmer lighting of his classroom or the faux-intimacy of one or another teacup-sized restaurant: the tracery of scarring over Newton’s forearms. The marks are unsubtle, jagged, angry lines that tear apart the inherent grace of muscle flexing under skin into a tapestry of pain; they speak as clearly as a shout to ill-timed transformations and fights turned catastrophes by a lost weapon form. Hermann doesn’t know why Newton rolls his sleeves up to elbows, as if inviting comment upon the marks of a trauma left scored into his skin as much as his psyche; he does know that he respects the other man for it, however begrudging that respect may be. Hermann can’t imagine the kind of resilience it must take to own your own failures so fearlessly, not when he has done everything in his power to leave his own behind him.

It’s the thought of that, the whole weight of respect and dismay and the sympathy that Hermann is sure Newton doesn’t want, from him least of all, that softens the tension at his chest and eases his words back to something less than argument, something very nearly comfort before he gives them voice. “I’m afraid you’re looking to the wrong person for reassurance on that particular point, Newton.”

Newton blinks, his lashes dipping like the flutter of moth wings behind his glasses; the distraction in his eyes clears, swept aside by surprise as he turns his head to look at Hermann in front of him once more. They stare at each other for a minute, Hermann looking up over the top of his glasses and Newton gazing shock through his; then Newton barks a laugh, and turns his head to look away at once.

“Damn,” he says, and kicks out to scuff his foot at the floor. “Right, of course. I can’t believe I forgot.” He shrugs, his shoulders lifting under his rumpled shirt towards his ears like he’s trying to make a wall of them more than undermining the force of his words. “I mean I didn’t _forget_. You know. Of course, how could I forget, it’s--” He lifts a hand to gesture towards Hermann, his fingers sweeping wide to encompass everything before him: the hunch of the other’s shoulders, the weight of the glasses that have never been anything but a hindrance in fights, the cane that forces Hermann into wearing his own past as Newton deliberately displays his; before he drops his hand to his side again and turns his head to look away down the empty hallway.

“What time is it?” Newton asks, the diversion as abrupt as it is pointless. He lifts a hand as if to check a nonexistent watch before his fingers come up to shove rough energy through the dark of his hair. “I bet I’ve got another class waiting for me or something.” He lifts his hand again, raising his arm into a farewell that comes only as he’s already turning away towards the hallway. “I’ll catch you later, Herms.” And he strides away down the corridor, moving quickly enough that Hermann isn’t sure he could catch him even if he were willing to make the effort, even if he knew what he might have to offer at the end of such a pursuit. He stays where he is instead, caught in his own distraction as he watches Newton walk away and vanish around the corner of the hall; it’s only as the other leaves that Hermann blinks and comes back to the weight of his usual self-consciousness enough to turn back to the board he had been considering in the first place.

It takes him long minutes before he recognizes the mission he left off on, and longer before he can return himself to the focus he had fallen into. He manages it, eventually -- by the time he gets to the end of the tags hanging before him his frown is for the preponderance of high-level missions before him, and the implications of those remaining unclaimed, rather than anything farther from his present line of sight. But when he finally turns away down the hall to return to his own silent classroom he’s leaning harder on his cane than he was before, and when his knee twinges Hermann grimaces and speeds his steps rather than surrendering to the limp his leg wishes for.


	4. Shatter

Something is wrong at the Academy.

Hermann is certain of it, now. There were rumors to start, tension in the air and murmurs of fear that he could tell himself he was imagining, that he could disregard without the confidence of hard evidence to back them up. But he’s been visiting the mission board every day now, not on his way into the Academy nor after classes are concluded when he has Newton at his side, but on his lunch break, or in the gaps between lectures, in those periods when he can have as few observers as he can manage for his frowning attention to the array of tags laid out on the board.

There are too many missions. There are always a wide array, of course; there have to be, to let students self-select based on their ability and aptitude and interest. But Hermann has never seen the board as cluttered as it is now, and as the days go by the tags only accumulate, collecting faster than they are being claimed. The first day Hermann counts two dozen that go unstamped by a meister’s hand, with double digits making up the topmost row of the most dangerous enemies; the second day there are six more, even with the removal of those chosen the previous day, and another pair of those are in the highest rank. Over the course of the week tags continue to build up, until they’re stacking two deep in some places even over the span of the board that seemed endless when Hermann first enrolled, and even though the older missions are being claimed as rapidly as may be it’s clear that the incoming tide of opponents is more than the Academy’s array of teams can handle.

It would be better with more Death Weapons. Hermann doesn’t enjoy the thought -- he avoids it whenever he can, with the strict rule for himself to not mull over things he can’t change -- but it presents itself too clearly for him to now avoid, as if the truth of it is laying itself into the floor under the tap of his cane as he makes his way back towards his classroom for his last course of the day. It’s the topmost row that is growing the fastest, where the influx of opponents is so clearly outpacing the handful of meisters and weapons capable of taking on the danger presented by such, and Hermann knows too well how few Death Weapons have been completed over the past decade. Students continue to enroll, of course, weapons by necessity and meisters by choice, but too many leave before the official graduation point, retreating back to the safety of a more mundane existence rather than settling into the fixed structure that life as Death Weapon forces upon those who earn the title.

Hermann can hardly blame them. They choose a civilian life, instead of offering themselves as tools to be used in the front lines of an unending war against humanity’s darker impulses; he can’t judge them for their retreat without acknowledging the blatant hypocrisy of his own lingering at the Academy, as close as he can get himself to those same front lines when his own unfitness for such has long-since been clearly defined. His cane slides against the tile underfoot, his knee quakes and threatens to buckle with the sudden force put onto it, and Hermann can hear the echoes of a past he tries to leave buried as much as possible, _lack of aptitude_ and _inability to Resonate_ like damnation in the cool tones of Academy advisors. It was his own stubbornness that brought him to this point, that shattered the strength of his knee along with the collapse of the tremoring Resonance that is the closest thing Hermann ever achieved with any of the many partners he tried to work with, and it was that same dug-in persistence that refused to set him free to turn and leave the mistakes of his misguided ambition and dashed hopes behind him. Hermann will never be a fighter, will never be the heroic meister he used to dream of being; so he does the best he can, and offers the accumulated knowledge of years of pining for the use of the younger, whole meisters, meisters like Mako Mori who yet have the possibility of success before them, given the right partner with which to align themselves.

Hermann doesn’t realize how deep in his own thoughts he has wandered, doesn’t notice how astray from his original point his shadowy memories have led him. He’s moving down the hallway but not seeing where he’s going, not truly noticing where his feet are bearing him, when there’s a crackle from the loudspeakers set into the line between walls and ceiling overhead, the sound shrill enough that it echoes off the span of the hall around Hermann. Hermann jumps, startled as much by this recollection to the present as by the sound itself, and it’s only in throwing out a hand to catch himself against the wall next to him that he keeps from falling outright. The jolt hisses strain past his teeth, dragging with the irritation that comes with a bad shock, but Hermann’s looking up all the same, lifting his attention to fix at the loudspeaker overhead as if his gaze is somehow necessary to make sense of the faintly staticky sound of the voice that spills from the speakers.

“ _Attention all members of the DWMA_.” Hermann knows the voice well enough, even if the fact of the loudspeakers’ use wasn’t enough all alone to entirely identify the man speaking into the other end. His shoulders straighten, his position tensing where he stands to bring him as close to military attention as he can manage for the voice of Stacker Pentecost, head of the DWMA and the closest thing to a formal boss Hermann has in his present role. “ _The Academy will be taking an unplanned half-day of instruction. Students may return to their homes or to the training or study grounds at their own discretion. All faculty and Death Weapons report at once to the Death Room for further debriefing._ ” There is a pause, as if of Pentecost taking a breath to give his words time to sink in. “ _That will be all._ ”

Hermann stares up at the speaker for a moment. The words are clear enough, the declaration unmistakable; but he can feel his heart speeding with adrenaline, can feel his hand tightening at his cane as if to lay claim to the thousand causes the other’s words could import. Down at the end of the hallway a classroom door opens to deposit a shockingly silent cluster of students; even the unexpected half-day isn’t enough to overcome the surprise that must come with such an unplanned announcement. The motion is enough to pull Hermann’s attention back to the present, as the doors along the hall begin to open to free more students, until the corridor is filled with the low murmur of half-frightened voices all speaking one atop the other in funereal tones. They swing wide of Hermann, too caught up in their own conversations to spare more than a glance for an unrecognized member of faculty; as he is, Hermann realizes, as the tide of students continues to move past him. He’s surrounded by weapons, the half of the school he never has occasion to teach directly; and he’s standing a bare handful of steps away from a door as familiar as that to his own classroom, if one he uses far less often.

Hermann stands where he is for a moment, staring at the door to Newton’s classroom and feeling as disoriented as if the structure of the world itself has swung wide around him. There’s no movement of that door, no spill of students breaking free for their suddenly empty afternoon; Hermann can’t hear any sound from inside either, although he’s certainly close enough for the usual cacophony of Newton’s teaching style to be clear. Hermann can’t recall if Newton is meant to be teaching at this hour, if this is one of the shared gaps that the other punctuates with unwelcome visits through the door connecting their classrooms. It’s possible that he’s absent from the Academy entirely, or perhaps so involved in one or another of his ill-advised projects that he has entirely missed the sound of the loudspeaker; and it did clearly call for all faculty, not just those capable of fighting in the event of true combat. Hermann takes a step forward from where he’s braced at the wall, his feet bearing him towards the shut door to Newton’s classroom by that one motion; and his knee quivers, threatening to drop him at his unthinking motion without the support of his cane. Hermann catches himself with some effort, grimacing at the ache the movement jolts up his leg, and his memory catches up too, murmuring over _at once_ in Pentecost’s unflinching tone. Hermann glances at the door again, frowning at the continued silence from within; and then he braces himself at his cane and turns hard, leaning heavily at the support as he strides back down the hallway to make his way towards the Death Room as ordered.

He keeps listening in his wake until he’s surely too far away to hear anything, but there is no sign of the door opening or of Newton’s carrying shout, and Hermann is left to manage the long walk to the Death Room in silence unbroken except by the murmurs of concern in his own mind.


	5. Revelation

Hermann is a late arrival to the gathering. He had expected his presence within the Academy to gain him at least enough of a headstart to compensate for the necessary delay that his awkward pace requires; but he was slow to begin moving, or distracted by thoughts lingering in the hallway behind him, or perhaps it is just that the Death Weapons were gathered in advance, before the rest of the faculty were called in to join the meeting. Regardless of the cause, by the time Hermann is making his way through the overlarge doors that lead into the Death Room itself he finds himself facing down rows of shoulders three deep, as the cluster of the other attendees fill nearly the entire space before him. There’s nothing he can do about that, of course, and it’s not as if anyone is waiting on his arrival in particular; the best Hermann can do under the circumstances is set his jaw, and duck his head, and come in to set himself in the back row of the crowd with some measure of gratitude that he didn’t miss the announcement outright. He braces himself in place, leaning heavily against his cane to ease the strain at his knee once he’s steadied himself at the back row, and it’s only then that he lifts his head to peer over the top of his glasses at the crowd around him.

Newton is nowhere to be seen. There are many people pressed into a small space, of course, and Hermann can’t be entirely sure Newton isn’t crowding against the very front lines with his usual overbearing enthusiasm; but he’s sure he’d be able to hear the other, if nothing else, and there’s no sign of Newton’s carrying tone over the unintelligible murmurs of the few willing to speak into the silence of anticipation. Hermann tips sideways to look around the shoulders in front of him, frowning as he squints to try to fix identification to the handful of his colleagues that make up the front row before Pentecost’s patient stance; but there’s still no rumpled white shirt, no tousled dark hair, and when Pentecost lifts his head and clears his throat Hermann is forced to subside into the rapt audience with no sign of Newton anywhere in the room around him.

“Thank you all for arriving so quickly,” Pentecost says, speaking in the deliberate, measured tone that always makes him sound so self-confident, as reserved and calm as granite. Hermann imagines he can feel himself steadying, as if gravity itself is gaining in force just to match itself to Pentecost’s expectations of it. Hermann is used to thinking of the Academy as a school, a space as much to corral the frantic energy of the students within as a means to teach them; Pentecost’s gaze always reminds him that it is a war they are fighting, one made endless by the nature of humanity and the madness that lurks possibility in even the best and the brightest among them. The thought is enough to straighten his shoulders, to draw his hunched-in posture up to deliberate height, because he might not be on the front lines but he’s doing his part all the same, they all are, and if Stacker Pentecost thinks they are important enough to be here, then Hermann Gottlieb is hardly going to argue the point with him.

Pentecost looks over the crowd before him, his gaze steady and intentional as he moves from face to face. “Is there anyone who ought to be here who is not?”

Hermann’s breath catches. It’s a simple question; he’s not even completely sure the other man is truly expecting an answer, so much as giving everyone a moment to collect themselves before he goes on speaking. But there _is_ someone missing, Hermann knows it; and his voice sticks in his throat to choke him to silence before he can find the breath to speak up. Surely Pentecost must know Newton is absent; perhaps Newton is the subject of all this, after all, perhaps something has happened to him severe enough to require a gathering of the full faculty of the school. The idea is brief, flickering across Hermann’s mind with all the desperate speed of rising panic; but adrenaline catches at it, magnifies the structure of a fleeting thought into sudden sincere concern. Where _is_ Newton? What happened to his classes? Shouldn’t he be here by now, where is he if not? Does Pentecost notice his absence or is it a known quantity? Should Hermann speak up to point out the lack, to throw his voice out into the ringing quiet that is spreading to fill the Death Room? Hermann takes a breath, uncertain even as he draws air into his lungs what he intends to do with it, and behind him there’s a _bang_ so loud he feels it jolt through every bone of his overtense body before he manages to twist and look over his shoulder.

“Damn it!” comes a hiss, carrying the intonation of a personal exclamation but still loud enough in the silence of the space for every ear to hear clearly. That includes Hermann, even caught as he is in the middle of twisting to look back over his shoulder, and his body sags on relief as all his tension gives way even before he raises his gaze enough to actually fix recognition to the disaster of a human being who has just stumbled into the Death Room. “Sorry I’m late!” That’s louder, accompanied by a frantic wave of Newton’s upraised hand as he surges along the path to the main gathering point at speed enough that his approach looks more like a controlled fall than anything else. “Did I miss anything?”

Hermann’s heart is racing in his chest, beating overfrantic with the same adrenaline trembling through the whole of his body and demanding voice of some kind. And so:

“Be _quiet_ ,” he hisses, almost snarling the words past the set of his teeth towards Newton’s haphazard approach. “If you can’t manage to arrive in a timely fashion at least have _some_ decorum about it.”

Newton’s gaze flickers across the entire crowd now turning to stare back at him to land on Hermann with a force that feels like a weight. “Hermann!” he says, sounding so breathlessly relieved that Hermann doesn’t even have the chance to collect himself into irritation at being referred to so casually in front of so many of their colleagues. “I was trying to find you, where _were_ you?” Newton is coming forward at speed, moving fast and without looking away from Hermann’s face; Hermann rocks back onto his heels as the other approaches, feeling more than a little as if Newton might intend to simply crash fully into him and knock the whole crowd over like so many bowling pins. It’s only at the last minute that Newton ceases his forward approach, and that only to reach out and seize both of Hermann’s shoulders in his as if the intensity of his communication demands the physical contact. “I have an idea I need to talk to you about.”

“ Newton,” Hermann says, with no visible reaction in Newton’s expression to indicate that he has noticed the other speaking. Hermann lifts his hand from his side to grab painful pressure at Newton’s wrist. “ _ Newton _ .” That does something, either his tone or his hold; Newton blinks, looking a little like he’s coming back into the present moment or perhaps waking from an immersive dream. Hermann jerks his head to the side, gesturing towards the group around them that way since he can’t stand to turn his head enough to actually see the staring eyes fixed upon the interruption that the two of them provide. “ _ Not now _ .”

Newton turns his head to consider the others in the room with them. His eyes are wide, his expression so blank for a moment Hermann wonders if he isn’t actually sleepwalking or similarly detached from a rational response to the present moment; but then his hold eases, his hands fall, and he steps back from Hermann, sliding free of the other’s grip at his arm to stand apart from the cluster that makes of the rest of the group.

“Oops,” he says, and flashes a shaky grin as he pushes his hand through his hair. “Sorry about that.” He lifts both hands palm-up and takes a step back. “Didn’t mean to intrude.”

“You are not intruding.” That’s Pentecost, lost from sight at the other side of the crowd; even just his voice is enough for every head in the room to turn to track the sound of his words. He’s looking at Newton, Hermann sees when he catches a glimpse of the other from between the wall of humanity before him; it’s not quite anger in his expression, but there’s a set patience at his jaw, as if he’s holding to calm as an act of resistance rather than a passive emotion. “You are a required attendee just like the rest of the staff.” There is a beat, a pause that Hermann can feel weighting against him as if Pentecost is pressing the solid force of his hand flat to Hermann’s shoulderblades. “You _are_ still part of my faculty, aren’t you Dr. Geiszler?”

“Me?” Newton blurts, sounding as shocked as if he really didn’t make sense of the direction of Pentecost’s speech. “Oh. Yeah, I mean.” He blinks, shakes his head, blinks again. “For sure, dude.” Hermann could smack him for his casual speech, for his complete inattention to any of the expected structure of formality and politeness to this representative of authority before them, but there’s something taut across Newton’s shoulders, something guiding the anxious shift of his feet that holds Hermann’s attention instead. Newton looks restless, as if the very fact of holding himself steady is requiring the entirety of his focus just to keep him from bursting free of this enclosed space and sprinting into action for some goal Hermann can’t imagine; he looks like the physical embodiment of a bomb with a lit fuse, his gaze so frantic with energy Hermann imagines he can hear the crackle of a flame climbing up the back of the other’s spine.

Whatever Hermann sees, Pentecost overlooks; perhaps on accident, though Hermann suspects it to be rather by design. He lifts his chin to look out at the array of people before him, gazing from one to the other in turn as if he has entirely set aside the problem of Newton Geiszler as unimportant in the face of some greater concern. His expression is set, his frown heavy with intent as he looks from one face to the next in turn; Hermann feels that pressure again, just as weighty even with its lesser specificity, as if it is the apocalypse itself to which Pentecost is gathering himself to speak.

“Thank you all for coming,” he says at last, and there is no interruption, this time, to the weight of his words. “I apologize for the minimal warning many of you received, but it has been my intention to maintain the functioning of this school as close to normal for as long as possible. The conclusion of that has been an inevitability for some time now, and I’m sorry to say that it is time for me to declare that we are in a state of crisis.”

Pentecost pauses to take a breath, punctuating his speech with the weight of his gaze seeking out each of the faces turned up towards him individually. Newton ducks his head, staring at his toes as he scuffs his shoe against the traction of the floor; Hermann lifts his, raising his chin and steadying his shoulders as a demonstration of his own composure. He doesn’t know if he succeeds in conveying anything other than brittle-shelled panic; Pentecost does nothing to single out either himself or Newton next to him before turning on to the next. It’s only after he has completed his consideration of the group clustered before him that he straightens his shoulders and resumes speaking.

“We are under attack,” he says, his voice carrying clear as a shout even with the weight of composure to soften it. “We have been at war since the founding of this Academy, as of course you all know. But our enemies -- our enemy -- has increased its range dramatically of late. Over the last months there has been an unprecedented increase in the number of Kishin eggs arising in Death City and the surrounding areas.” Pentecost turns against the dais on which he’s standing and takes a measured step forward to punctuate his speech with the sound of his footfalls. “Many of you know this already. Many of you have been called in from foreign assignment to deal with the imminent threat to this city, and these people, and this Academy itself. Your efforts have postponed this outcome for weeks and are to be applauded.”

Pentecost takes a turn at the edge of the dais and pivots back to consider them all. “Unfortunately it is not celebration I have to offer to you now.” He reaches behind his back to fold his hands behind him; the gesture straightens his shoulders and lifts them to military precision under the unadorned black of his habitual clothing. “We are presently facing the greatest crisis in the history of the Academy, and every one of you will be necessary if we are to overcome it.”

“ _ What _ ?” Hermann cringes from the voice as much for the edge on the word as for the volume; and more than anything from the proximity, and the identity that same grants the speaker. “What are we fighting against?”

Pentecost lifts his head. There’s no anger in his eyes; just more of that vast, endless patience that carries such pressure that Hermann’s breath leaves his lungs. Newton seems unaffected; he still stands at Hermann’s side, eyes wide and breath catching and his whole body thrumming as if with an electrical charge enough to steal whatever modicum of sanity he once had. Hermann wants to reach out to brace his shoulder, to touch his wrist, something to draw off some of that raw energy, but Newton’s on his bad side, and he can’t spare the grip on his cane to reach out over the distance between them. He looks away, giving over Newton to look to Pentecost instead, and so it is that every eye in the room is fixed on the man before them when Pentecost fills his lungs to speak.

“A Kishin,” he intones, his voice as weighty as night, as resonant with sound as the tolling of a bell. “We will be fighting a full-formed Kishin, Dr. Geiszler.”

Hermann’s chest flexes, his lungs empty themselves on a gasp that strains over the outline of a groan of terror at that one word. He’s not the only one; even the Death Weapons look bloodless-white with terror, and a few of them look so shaky Hermann wonders if his cane wouldn’t be of some assistance to them. It’s only because he’s so close to Newton, he thinks, that he hears the other’s reaction at all, and only then because he’s listening for it. Hermann isn’t sure anyone else in the room, even Newton himself, hears the whimpering laugh that spills from the other’s throat and flickers itself into an almost-smile across his lips.


	6. React

There is nothing they can do, in the end. Pentecost’s announcement is just that: a declaration of information so vital it must be shared with the rest of the faculty beyond those already dedicated to fighting on the front lines. His speech results in a brief flurry of questions, a smatter of uncertainty that is answered primarily by further uncertainty, and then silence that he concludes by dismissing those not Death Weapons or those weapons’ meisters. That includes Hermann, of course, and Newton with him; they are left to make their way out of the Death Room along with the handful of other faculty who lack the physical strength or mental disposition for a fight and leave the remainder to discuss the details of tactics with Pentecost himself.

It’s not that Hermann envies them. He has spent long years studying the process that allows a Kishin egg to evolve into its completed form; every text he has read speaks to the horror of facing a fully-awakened Kishin, of the toll it takes even on those who survive meeting it and the difficulty in returning back to a stable mental balance. Hermann has no illusions about his ability to bear such a pressure, not with his mental failings written into place in the ache at his knee from that one failed Resonance long years ago; whatever benefit he will be able to offer will come from the texts he’s read and the patterns he might be able to form from the knowledge Pentecost has given them all to work from. But there’s a hunch to his shoulders as he steps through the doorway to the Death Room and turns to make his way back down a corridor made funereal by the silence filling it, and he truly has no interest at all in any kind of interaction beyond retreating to his classroom and losing himself to the quiet enough to process what he has just heard.

Unfortunately, what Hermann is interested in has had very little bearing on his life for years, now. Newton is just as jittery when they leave the Death Room as he was when they entered it, all but bouncing in place as he follows Hermann’s draggingly slow pace, and they’re hardly out into the freedom of the corridor before he bursts out with the torrent of speech that Hermann has known was inevitable since he saw the bright-eyed enthusiasm writ clear over Newton’s face.

“This is so _exciting_ ,” he says, crowding in closer towards Hermann even than they were in the crowded space before the Death Room dais. “What an opportunity, huh? What a chance, I never expected something like this would happen in my lifetime.”

“Me either,” Hermann says, with far more weight on the words than what Newton has granted them. “I had hoped I might be allowed some measure of peace, if nothing else.” He taps his cane hard against the floor to punctuate as he steps forward. “I should have known the world would be set on dashing my hopes.”

Newton’s laugh is bright and startled; Hermann thinks it might sound almost warm, if it weren’t made of such cracked-glass brittle edges. “What are you talking about?” he asks. “I should have known you would be a downer about this. You really do find ways to be depressed about anything.”

That swings Hermann’s head up to fix his attention on the other’s face. For a moment he’s too shocked to even find words to fit to the span of blank horror in his thoughts; when he finally does lay claim to speech it comes with a tension in his throat enough to turn the statement to a gasp and imbue the whole of his words with shock. “ _Me_ ,” he gasps. “This is a _Kishin_. Something enough to wipe out the whole of the city, if it’s left free. We’ll be lucky if we’re able to take it out with every weapon in the entire Academy working together and that’s not even considering the inevitable losses. What is it you expect me to do, arrange a _celebration party_?”

Newton gusts a sigh and rolls his eyes, as if Hermann is the one being unreasonable. “Obviously not,” he says. “It’s a huge deal. Of course it is. The city’s in danger, yeah. But that’s what we’re here for, right?” He lifts a hand to gesture expansively at the walls around them, the structure of the Academy arching itself to form the ceiling overhead and the weight of the entire school around the pace of their feet. “This is our _purpose_. It’s what the DWMA was established to deal with. Doesn’t it give you a sense of fulfillment, at least?”

Hermann’s fingers clench harder against the handle of his cane. He looks away from Newton’s face, down to fix his gaze on the smooth of the floor before them instead, as if he needs the aid of his sight to keep his perfectly even steps forward steady. “It makes me feel _useless_ ,” he says, biting off the words to drag them into the comforting heat of anger instead of the weight they carry on their own, when there is no one else against whom he can whet his unhappiness into anything other than misery. “I’m only still here because I can be of some service to the students who are still in training to make better meisters of them than they would be otherwise.” He sets his cane down with force before him. “In a battle, though? You and I are no more than dead weight.”

There’s a pause of silence. Quiet is unusual from Newton in any case; this one stretches so long that Hermann can feel his shoulders lift as if to protect himself, as if he’s feeling the edge on his words as clearly as a blade. He wants to apologize but he doesn’t know how to, can’t think how to frame himself to a retreat from what is nothing more brutal than obvious truth; he’s still caught in the loop of guilty self-consciousness when Newton clears his throat to speak with careful force into the pool of silence that has formed.

“I mean, yeah,” he says. The words sound like agreement; there’s something in the edge on his voice, though, that tightens Hermann’s shoulders, that skids down his spine to brace him as if he’s seeing some impending crisis utterly distinct from the apparent surrender of Newton’s words. “On our own you’re a failed meister and I’m a weapon who can barely keep from tearing himself apart every time he transforms.” Newton laughs, the sound so raw and jagged that Hermann doesn’t even cringe from the overt dismissal of his own ability. It’s not as if he doesn’t know what he is, after all; and right now Hermann can’t spare the attention to so much as look away from the unreadable tension of the emotions flickering over Newton’s face like desperation given physical form. Newton blinks hard, takes a shaky breath, and when he speaks the words fall from his exhale like they’re toppling free of his lips without any conscious thought. “But who knows what we might be able to do together.”

Hermann’s steps skid to a stop. Newton keeps going by a half-stride before he stumbles himself into a halt, but he doesn’t turn around to meet the shocked force of Hermann’s gaze; just as well, in any case, because right now Hermann doesn’t what to know what he might see in the overbright haze of delusion that’s gripped the colleague who has forced his way into being something like a friend, in spite of all Hermann’s efforts to keep him at a distance.

“You are joking,” Hermann says, speaking loud and sharp enough to cast a resounding echo on his voice. “Newton. You _cannot_ be serious.”

Newton’s shoulders lift up, offering the outline of a shrug without relaxing enough to set it free. “Why not?” he says, still speaking to the empty corridor before him instead of turning around to meet Hermann’s eyes. “You’re a meister. I’m a weapon. Don’t we need all the fighting force we can come up with?”

“I’m a _failed_ meister,” Hermann spits back, throwing the rejection of his own worth with as much viciousness as if it’s an insult to Newton rather than a dig at his own value. “It took three tries before I could partner with _anyone_ and my first attempt at Resonance put both of us in the hospital.” He leans harder on his cane, as if acknowledging the fact of his familiar injury is throbbing greater hurt through it just for the thought. “I can hardly _walk_ and you expect me to take on wielding something like _you_?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Newton says, and twists on his heel to round on Hermann behind him. His cheeks are flushed, his eyes are bright as if with tears, but the strain at his mouth looks closer to anger than sadness, and that fever-heat is still all but glowing from every inch of his scarred-over skin. “Who _else_ am I supposed to work with? I’m a _weapon_ , Hermann, I can’t do anything on my own and you’re the only person who’s ever been able to keep up with me!”

“ _I don’t like you_ ,” Hermann shouts back, rocking forward into Newton’s personal space to match and meet the other’s unthinking motion forward. “You have forced yourself into every aspect of my life, you have invaded every part of my personal peace, and now you want me to _wield_ you? You’re asking the impossible, Newton.”

“I’m asking for _anything_ ,” Newton lashes back. “I’d rather take a stand and do what I can than sit on my hands and hide behind an aching knee and a cane as if they’re going to protect me from my own cowardice!”

Hermann hisses. “ _Stupidity_ isn’t the same as bravery,” he lashes back. “You’d know that if you weren’t so caught up in some juvenile need to prove yourself that’s as likely to get you killed as anything else.”

“I’d rather have that,” Newton tells him. “Better to die a hero than rust away to nothing.”

Hermann tips back, his weight angling back over his heels as he stares at Newton before him. The other is still leaning forward, still hunching in as if he’s trying to overwhelm Hermann with his presence, as if he’s trying to bridge the gap of perspective by force; and Hermann knows too well how physical confrontations will result for him. Better to draw back, to retreat to a safe distance, where the clarity of deliberate thought can provide a structure for logical advance; so Hermann rocks away, and ducks his head to watch as he carefully adjusts his cane to a steadier point against the floor.

“I’m not going to do this,” he says, speaking softly as he clenches his fingers to white-knuckled pressure at the handle. When he lifts his head Newton is still staring at him, all the frantic strain of adrenaline writ clear across his face, and Hermann gazes back at him without flinching. “I’m not going to help you kill yourself, Newton.”

Newton rocks his weight back onto his heels, echoing Hermann’s own retreat. His shoulders sag, his position eases; his shirt slides over his arms, as if the fabric itself is gaining weight enough to slip farther past his elbows. He looks at Hermann for a moment, eyes wide and dark and staring like he’s looking right through the other, or like he’s seeing something more there than Hermann himself; then he lifts his shoulders up in a sharp shrug, and lifts his hands to stuff into his pockets as he turns away.

“Fine,” he says, and pivots to pace away down the hall. “Have it your way, Herms.” And he’s gone, striding away at a far faster pace than the one he usually adopts when walking at Hermann’s side. Hermann has no chance of catching him up even if he were trying to; as it is he just stands still, adrift in the middle of the echoing corridor around him while Newton walks away, and turns out of sight, and leaves Hermann with nothing but oppressive silence around him.


	7. Fog

By the time Hermann finally glances up from the array of notes he has spread out all over the available surface of his desk, the sun has set so long hence that there’s nothing but black to see on the other side of his classroom windows.

He hadn’t intended to lose track of time. With classes put on hold so every half-functional weapon and meister pair can be drawn into emergency training or the front lines of what is rapidly becoming an all-out war, Hermann’s classroom has become the best space for him to spread out his paperwork and immerse himself in his thoughts. He could do the same at home, he supposes; but it’s information from the mission board that he’s been searching through, and in spite of his meticulous note-taking he’d like to stay close to his source, in the event he should think of some additional detail that he failed to take note of on his first round of data gathering. His desk is bigger here, as well, expansive enough to grant him an air of gravitas when facing down a classroom of as many as a hundred students, though Hermann has rarely broken a dozen; and there’s the change of scenery, too, the clean break between work and home that Hermann tells himself aids his productivity and clarifies his focus.

They’re all excuses, of course. There is truth under them -- some of them, at least -- but the real reason Hermann trudges over the walk to the Academy every day is something far less logical than one of his well-reasoned arguments. The Academy is where the battle is being fought, where the fight is being planned; and even if all Hermann can do is stay out of the way, he can tell himself someone might think of him, if he’s close to hand, that someone could stride through the door of his classroom and demand him in the name of collecting every meister on hand for some grand gesture of defiance. It’s laughably unlikely even in Hermann’s own mind, where he can gloss over the ache at his knee and the question of who would even think of a dusty professor and remember the childhood dreams Hermann himself has done everything in his power to bury; but still he comes to the Academy every morning, and stays in his office for the long hours that span through to the night, and every evening he walks home with a lingering sense of disappointment in the back of his mind, no matter how sternly he tells himself to give up this particular variety of foolishness.

Those nights are growing later and later, too. That’s something else Hermann doesn’t intend; he knows well enough how much protest his body can and will muster to the abuses of carelessness, and he doesn’t intend to send himself to a sickbed just for the sake of another hour or two of staring at the same data points in the haze that settles over him. But he gets caught up in his line of thinking, in his categorization of details that never seem to lead anywhere, and with no one to pull him free of his fugue Hermann spends more midnights eating dinner than sleeping.

He hasn’t seen Newton in days. Pentecost called for a hold to all standard academic pursuits, told off Death Weapons and three-star meisters to take over the crash course in combat training for those students prepared for it and left the rest of them to stay out the way if they can’t keep themselves busy. But Hermann had never really expected Newton, of all people, to vanish as thoroughly as he seems to have managed. His classes aren’t meeting, that much Hermann is sure of, and every time he collects the energy and the excuse enough to peer through the connecting door he finds Newton’s room as dark and empty as if it had never been used at all. There is no sign of the man himself, not so much as the suggestion of warmth that follows the simple fact of a person existing in a space for a time; so far as Hermann can tell Newton left the Academy after Pentecost’s announcement and hasn’t been back since.

Hermann could go looking for him. The thought slides through his thoughts occasionally, like a flicker of color vibrant and strange to interrupt the black-and-white clarity of the information he’s laying out in dozens of patterns, searching for some underlying structure to provide the assistance his analysis might be able to bring to those skilled and strong enough to be allowed to fight on the front lines. Hermann has watched Newton stride away towards his own apartment on multiple occasions; he’s even visited himself, if only briefly, on those evenings that Newton insisted on playing some new record for him or showing off the latest in his collection of movie posters. Newton must be at home, if he’s not showing his face at the Academy; maybe he’s waiting for someone to come looking for him, maybe he’s waiting to be missed. The thought hurts something against the inside of Hermann’s chest, like a bruise he didn’t realize was there until it was touched; but the idea of being the one to go searching for Newton, as if he can’t make it through the span of a few days on his own, is appalling enough to set Hermann’s jaw on stubbornness and turn his attention back down to the work before him. Newton is a grown man, more than old enough to be held to an expectation of responsibility for his own well-being; Hermann is neither his mother nor his wife, and he refuses to behave with the kind of fluttering concern that would suggest either role. So he stays late at the Academy, his attention fixed on paper instead of on his own existence, and when he realizes how late it has become it’s with a surge of dizziness that sends him reaching for the edge of his desk to steady himself even before he takes on the effort of getting to his feet so he can set about collecting himself for the walk home.

He’s going to need to stop for dinner. Hermann can’t remember what he has still available in his overused pantry, and even if he had every shelf fully stocked he’s sure he lacks the energy to actually prepare even a basic meal. It’s well past sundown, with the dense fog that has settled itself over the town as if in consideration of Pentecost’s warning to block out any hope of moon- or starlight; the only light is from the flicker of streetlamps, and even those seem more intent on turning the fog a lurid shade of Halloween-orange than in actually illuminating the cobblestones beneath Hermann’s feet. Hermann picks his way carefully, watching the placement of his cane to keep from slipping or toppling into an outright fall; this necessary attention to his feet allows him almost no space at all to actually consider his surroundings. Many of the restaurants he habitually frequents will be closed with the lateness of the hour; Hermann struggles through half-forgotten memories, reaching for some of the more esoteric awareness of the city that Newton is always overflowing with. He remembers visiting a sushi restaurant once some months ago, tucked into the space between two larger businesses and with no more of a sign on the front door than a piece of paper taped to the inside of the glass; locating it will be a challenge in itself, but Hermann is sure Newton had mentioned going there for a late-night sushi fix, and all he really needs is some measure of sustenance to get him through the night. He lifts his attention from the stones before him, moving slowly to keep his footing while he frowns out into the haze of the city around him, searching for some kind of landmark to guide him through the vague structure of memory that has pinned itself to the thought of the restaurant in question.

It’s hard to see much of anything, in truth. The businesses lining the street here have long-since closed; Hermann can’t even make a guess as to how many of them are still in operation and only closed for the night and how many have shut their doors for good. The shadows make him feel like he’s walking through a ghost town, as if his aching knee might carry him forward forever, wandering circles in a city where nothing changes and he never sees anyone else, never hears any other but the sound of his own voice and the semi-rhythmic tap of his cane on the cobblestones. Hermann hunches his shoulders, frowning irritation at this wholly unnecessary foray into sentiment, and when he looks back to the street around him it’s with intention behind his gaze, a focused determination to place everything he sees firmly in the realm of logic. That half-seen shadow is a cat, tail lashing as she considers the motions of some small creature meant for her prey; that flicker of light is a moth, wings beating feathery in the illumination of one of the streetlights. The sound down that alley is a garbage can lid falling free to clatter against the paving stones; that distant echo is the bark of a dog made strange in the damp weight of the night. Hermann’s shoulders ease fractionally as his incoherent panic gives way to the persuasion of logic and the calm reason of understanding, and it’s just as he’s taking a breath to heave a sigh of relief that light glitters and catches itself to a sparkle just at the corner of his eye.

Hermann’s attention jerks sideways, all his carefully-constructed composure evaporating in a surge of sudden, instinctive fear. That was no cat, no fluttering insect in the shadows of the night; for a moment he’s lost it entirely, as if whatever caught his eye has disappeared from existence outright. Hermann stares into the eerie lighting, heart hammering in his chest; and then he shifts backwards, adjusting his line of sight by an inch, and he sees it again. It’s a bright thing, sparkling like a diamond in even the dim light of the street; for a moment Hermann frowns, trying to make sense of what he’s seeing, but he can get no traction on the details from the distance he’s at. It’s only when he takes a step that the flicker of light shifts enough to let him see clearly, and no sooner has he parsed what he’s looking at than he sags with sheepish relief once more. It’s no more than a bit of broken glass, something shattered into a starburst pattern that caught the light in such a distracting way. Hermann can see it clearly now, nothing more than a blown-out circle caught in a dark frame; and then recognition surges up in him to eclipse reality, and his breath catches on adrenaline completely different than the unformed panic that went before, because he _knows_ those frames, knows the owner of the glasses lying shattered beyond repair on the fog-damp cold of the cobblestones underfoot.

Hermann doesn’t think about coming forward. He’s not watching his footing, not measuring his pace; he moves quickly, so fast that his motion across the distance of the street is more of a lunge than a measured action. His cane catches at the edge of a stone, his feet stumble and trip to nearly drop him onto his face, but he’s leaning down anyway, dropping to a knee as fast as his legs give out to reach and touch his fingers to the edge of those crushed-flat frames. It can’t be, it’s a coincidence, it’s paranoia making him so fearful; but as his fingers touch broken glass his gaze catches on the bright of color, too far away from the glow of the streetlight to see while standing but trickling a clear path over the cobblestones between the fallen glasses and the form of their owner.

Newton’s shirt is a mess. It’s the first thing that Hermann’s mind fixates on, as if to fall back to the comfort of familiar irritation in the face of fear too great to be faced all at once. The cuffs of his dress shirt are undone as usual, one shoved up past his elbow and the other fallen down to catch under the weight of his outstretched arm; the collar is unbuttoned too, by an extra inch than the usual slack opening Newton pairs with the sloppy knot on his tie. That tie is still around his neck but it’s dragged to the side now, the knot twisted up under his ear like it’s been used as a leash instead of for its intended purpose; and that’s as much as Hermann notices before he’s dropping his cane outright, leaving it to fall unnoticed to the cobblestones behind him as he throws himself forward to reach and grab for the front of that rumpled shirt, to catch his hand in against the back of that lopsided tie. There’s color smeared over the shirt, dried-in red staining the white nearly to black and speckling around what look like scorch marks at Newton’s shoulder and at the untucked hem dragging free of his pants; but it’s the red dripping across Newton’s face that Hermann’s fingers reach for, pressing against the smudge of dark lashes lying heavy over the other’s cheekbone and the crimson staining his upper lip where it’s spilled from a past-tense nosebleed. Hermann’s hands press to Newton’s skin, his fingers seeking for stability as the whole of his body thrums like he’s carrying an electrical charge; his touch slips in blood but he doesn’t think of it, doesn’t hesitate in catching his arm around Newton’s shoulders and dragging with the full force of his body to pull the other in against him.

“ _Newton_ ” and Hermann doesn’t recognize his own voice at his lips, doesn’t recognize the weird, strangled note of panic as it echoes off the walls of the alley around him and back to his own ears. He sounds terrified, sounds tearful: sounds desperate, a man pleading for a response with no more coherency than the sound of that one name. “Newton, what did you do, _Newton_!” But there’s no response from the limp form in his arms, no drag of a laugh or spark of a taunt, and even when Hermann drags Newton in against the support of his chest so he can fumble his hands against the line of the other’s neck, he can’t be sure if it’s a pulse under his fingertips or just the trembling of panic shivering his touch against fog-clammy skin.


	8. Certain

Hermann does not remember how he gets Newton back to the Academy.

It’s for the best, he thinks later. Judging from the way his entire body is left shaking from exhaustion as much as the pain from his knee, which is throbbing as badly as Hermann’s memory will allow him to recall it ever hurting before, he’s sure it was an unpleasant process. He’d just as soon not recall the details of managing his cane and his own struggling footsteps along with the dead weight of a completely unresponsive grown man; as for the stairs leading up to the front of the Academy itself, Hermann thinks he could very happily spend the rest of his life never facing those in either direction ever again. The question of how to return to his own apartment is a far distant one, a concern so separate from his present existence that he hardly spares it a moment’s notice; as, indeed, his own physical exhaustion is a passing concern, something he only recognizes as not-fatal before dismissing it from his focus entirely as unimportant.

Newton has survived Hermann’s struggling efforts to get him to the Academy, at least. Hermann had been afraid to think too hard on it, afraid to pause long enough to decide if the heat radiating from the body pressing against his own was no more than the result of his own overexertion, if the arm he dragged around his shoulders to take most of the other’s weight wasn’t going cold and stiff with proof of the futility of Hermann’s efforts. But there is a gratifying fluster of activity as soon as Hermann gets them through the front of the Academy, a rush of medical attention that surely would be useless without the continued rhythm of Newton’s breathing, and after Hermann makes his much-slower way to the infirmary he is granted a position inside the room, blocked from Newton’s presence only by a thin curtain rather than the weight of the tightly-shut door. Hermann isn’t sure how he’s merited this, if he’s being considered as the second patient to be treated after Newton has been stabilized, or if he’s earned his place by dragging Newton across what feels like half of the city, or if it’s just that he’s the closest thing to a family member Newton has easily accessible. The possibilities flicker through his mind, illuminating themselves with potential before collapsing under the weight of unimportance again, and finally Hermann tips himself in over the support of his elbows at his knees and satisfies himself with the simple comfort of counting his breathing over the murmur of effort on the other side of that curtain.

The sound of the door opening rouses him from his reverie. Hermann tips his head to the side, too exhausted to muster more than a vague curiosity as to the identity of the newcomer, but no sooner has his vision latched onto the absolute black of the other’s clothes than he jerks himself to upright, straightening to attention in a burst of ill-advised movement. His shoulders spark protest, his spine throbs so bright Hermann imagines he can hear it creak, and he’s still in the middle of grimacing through the first surge of hurt when Pentecost’s gaze falls from the white of the curtain to Hermann at the side of the door.

“Dr. Gottlieb,” Pentecost intones, ducking his head into a nod with more true weight behind it than Hermann can recall ever seeing from him before. He’s still breathless with the shock of that attention when Pentecost strides forward into the room to duck around the curtain that has proven such a wall to Hermann since his arrival. Hermann’s body moves entirely on autopilot to lunge him forward and onto shaky feet, but he’s left alone and trembling on the far side of the curtain, as uncertain in his ability to keep himself upright under his own power as in his right to duck around the curtain and involve himself in the low murmur of conversation he can just make out, even if he can understand none of the words spoken. He tightens his grip at his cane, spiking a dull throb of hurt across his knuckles -- scraped raw at some point, though he has no recollection of what he did to tear them to open scabs -- and he’s just setting his jaw against the hurt of being kept apart when Pentecost strides back from around the curtain with the same crisp pace that he so readily offers under any circumstances. His gaze drops to Hermann as he steps back into sight; his nod this time is clearly a farewell, a conclusion to his momentary acknowledgment as surely as his initial greeting was the opening to it, and he looks back to the door as quickly, Hermann leaving his attention as rapidly as he reaches for the handle to the infirmary door.

Hermann doesn’t know what possesses him. He would normally never so much as think to interrupt Stacker Pentecost on any of his obviously important duties over the course of a day, any more than he would consider himself capable of singlehandedly carrying the weight of another person up the stairs of the Academy. But one impossible feat leads to another, or perhaps it’s his exhaustion that has frayed the edges of nerves wound too tight on fear to be restrained, because when Pentecost reaches for the door of the infirmary Hermann is coming forward, crossing the distance to the other man with speed if not with grace as he takes a breath to speak.

“Sir,” he says, speaking as softly as he can manage. It’s not as quiet as he would like -- his voice is as disobedient as his body, and the only way he can be sure of being heard is to put more force behind the word than he quite means to -- but it does the job for which it is intended, insofar as it pulls Pentecost’s attention back around to him. The other man still has his grip on the handle of the door and his arm steady with the intention to leave the infirmary, but there’s a flicker of disbelieving interest in the arc of his eyebrow as he fixes his gaze on Hermann as if to ask what the other is thinking in stopping him. Hermann’s shoulders tense with self-consciousness, his fingers flex at his cane; and the pain spikes up his arm, steadying him as surely as if he has Newton on his feet at his side egging him on. He lifts his chin, making up for the disadvantage of height he has to at least meet Pentecost’s gaze head-on, without flinching away or apologizing. “What happened to him?”

Pentecost considers Hermann for a long moment. Hermann can feel all his skin going cold under that gaze, as his body quails under the absolute focus of that attention; he feels like his every weakness is being measured under those eyes, from the obvious line of the cane at his hip to the weight of his glasses on his nose all the way down to the rumple of his clothes and the frantic adrenaline of fear in his veins. Hermann can’t imagine what Pentecost is making of him, can’t fathom how foolish he must look to the eyes of a man so used to considering Death Weapons and full-star meisters before him; but when Pentecost moves it is to let his hold at the door handle go instead of turning to step out into the hallway, and when he shifts his feet turn towards Hermann as he reaches to clasp his hands together behind his back and give the other the full of his attention.

“I had hoped you might enlighten me on that point,” he says, his voice as calm and level as if they’re speaking of the weather. “Until such time as Dr. Geiszler awakens you are the best source of information for the rest of us.”

“Will he?” Hermann blurts, speaking so quickly the desperation on his tone is embarrassingly clear. “He’s going to wake up?” Pentecost just looks at him, that same absolute calm in his gaze like a mirror to reflect all Hermann’s missteps back to him, and Hermann grimaces at the echo of his own words and ducks his head forward in surrender on this point.

“I don’t know much,” he admits. “I was on my way home from the Academy when I found him like that in an alley.” Hermann’s throat tightens, his eyes burn; for a moment he has to duck his head forward to hide the start of damp at his lashes from Pentecost’s watchful gaze. “He could have been there for hours, I don’t know.”

“That’s doubtful.” Pentecost’s tone shows absolutely no sign of the emotion Hermann is fighting back from his own throat; it’s the more calming for it. “The bloodstains were too fresh for them to have been there very long, and your travel back to the Academy could hardly have been rapid.” Hermann shakes his head and Pentecost continues. “You must have found him very shortly after the attack.”

“What attack?” Hermann asks, interrupting again before he can think the better of it. “What did that to him? Where _is_ it? Is anyone going after it?” Pentecost closes his mouth to look at him and Hermann presses his lips together to swallow himself back towards composure. “Sir.”

Pentecost waits for another moment, as if to make sure Hermann really is done speaking, before he takes a breath to answer. “It looks to have been one of the smaller Kishin eggs within the city. We have a mission in place to hunt it down but under the present circumstances it remains unclaimed.”

“So it’s left free to attack random passersby on the street?” Hermann says. He’s entirely lost control of his tone, now; even the cool judgment in Pentecost’s gaze doesn’t prove sufficient to stem the flow of the words spilling past his lips like they’re tearing themselves free from the knot of panic in his chest, that clenching pressure of horror that laid claim to him when he saw Newton lying so still in the alley and hasn’t undone itself since. “That can hardly be part of the attack strategy. How many other missions are going--” and it’s at that point that Pentecost reaches for the door handle with one hand, and for the collar of Hermann’s jacket with the other, and Hermann finds himself not so much urged out of the infirmary as bodily picked up and moved through the doors. He stumbles as Pentecost follows in his wake, afraid for a moment that he is about to fall outright with this force on his unsteady legs, but Pentecost doesn’t free his grip as he steps out of the infirmary and turns to guide them both close against the wall outside it.

“Listen, Gottlieb,” he says, speaking low but with force enough on his tone that it halts even the emotional spill of Hermann’s words in his throat and stifles him into abrupt silence. “ _We are doing our best_. I’ve called in every single Death Weapon. _Every_ one, from every overseas assignment. We’re matching students as quickly as we can lay hands to them and urging others through training as rapidly as we can get them to hold a Resonance.” His hold at the back of Hermann’s jacket eases, his hand drops to his side, but Hermann makes no attempt to move away or to interrupt; he’s caught in place, held as fixed by the expression on Pentecost’s face as by the edge on his voice. There’s a crease at his forehead, strain at his mouth; it’s dizzying to see his usual mask of composure shattered, to catch a glimpse of something immediately, terrifyingly human beneath it. “It is _not enough_. We are being overrun on the order of days rather than months and the immediate safety of the city streets _must_ take second priority to the sanity of the world as a whole.” Pentecost rocks back onto his heels and straightens his shoulders. “I _will not_ allow this Kishin to break free, no matter what sacrifices it requires from me.”

Hermann stares at Pentecost. He can’t argue with any of the other man’s words; he knows in his soul what kind of destruction would spill out over the world in the event of their failure, knows what kind of stakes are on the line and how trivial any one life is against those same. But the rational awareness of the value of one person holds no power at all over the ache in his chest, the terror of loss he feels every time he thinks of the blood speckling that familiar rumpled shirt, and logic isn’t enough to grant him the voice to surrender to the necessary decision of Pentecost’s words.

Pentecost takes a deep breath, lifting his chin as he shuts his eyes. Hermann watches his expression shift, watches his mouth ease and his forehead smooth to strip away the humanity of fear, to replace it with the cool distance of his position at the Academy, his mask of a leader untouched by the difficulty of human feelings and the irrational heat of a human heart. When he opens his eyes again his gaze is cool, utterly stripped of the brief surge of exhausted temper Hermann saw moments before.

“Dr. Geiszler’s injuries have little to do with the Kishin Egg he ran into,” Pentecost tells Hermann. “It was likely something small enough that it fled as soon as it realized it was facing something more than a civilian. Most of the damage is what he did to himself in attempting a partial transformation.”

Hermann’s breath leaves his lungs in a gust. “He _transformed_? Intentionally?” Pentecost ducks his head into a nod; Hermann has to struggle to fill his chest with air enough to give voice to the shock in him. “He can’t bear that, he’s never been able to achieve a stable weapon form. He could have _killed_ himself.”

Pentecost huffs an exhale. “I am well aware,” he says. “I suspect Dr. Geiszler felt it was a risk worth taking.”

“He’s mad,” Hermann says, too caught up in his own shock to remember to whom he’s speaking, to think to modulate his reaction. “He’s going to destroy himself without someone to look out for him.”

“You and I are in full agreement on that,” Pentecost says. “Newton Geiszler has always been something of a loose cannon.” He turns to look away down the corridor, his gaze catching as if on something of true interest in the utterly empty hallway. “He needs a meister more than most.” There’s a beat, a breath just long enough for those words to expand into a weight they wouldn’t have alone; then Pentecost looks back to fix Hermann with his attention again.

“He is going to wake up,” he says, and Hermann doesn’t know if that’s a certainty or a promise and supposes there’s not much of a difference, when offered by Stacker Pentecost. “I recommend you keep yourself nearby to give him a grounding point while he recovers. He could do with seeing a familiar face.” He lifts his hand to weight at Hermann’s shoulder for a moment of steady pressure; then he turns away and strides off down the corridor, shoulders straight and steps as perfectly even as if measured individually. Hermann is left standing at the side of the infirmary hall, staring out after Pentecost’s retreating form and feeling the ache of relief and exhaustion and confusion through every bone in his body; it’s only after even the echo of the other’s footsteps has died off to silence that he collects himself to finally turn, and look back, and pass back through the door to reclaim his position on the distant side of that white cutain.

Whatever other uncomfortable implications Pentecost may have made, that’s one order that Hermann is grateful to obey.


	9. Conscious

Hermann sleeps, eventually. It’s well past the latest hours of the day and bleeding into the start of the next, and he was already limping with exhaustion when he first left the Academy on his way to a home that he never reached for the shock of finding Newton along the way. The medical staff is more concerned with hovering over Newton than with making Hermann more comfortable and Hermann doesn’t begrudge them that focus; he thinks he’d be more likely to snap at anyone who took the time to spare for him when there are such better uses for their attention. His knee aches, sharply now and building with each hour that drags past, until he’s sure it will be enough to chase off all thought of rest; but in the end sheer weariness gets the better of him and slumps him into unconsciousness against the support of the hard plastic chair he has claimed on the other side of that white curtain. Hermann drifts, drowsing through what he thinks are closer to daydreams than the inventions of his true subconscious, and it’s into the haze of those that the voice breaks with all the sharp clarity of a bell.

“I’m _fine_.” It’s not quite anger on the words, not really the bite of true temper; just irritation, Hermann thinks, a kind of tight-wound pressure demanding expression even if just by the spill of strain onto a few abrupt words. “I don’t need to be babied. I’ve had worse than this tripping in my apartment, I swear.”

Hermann doesn’t wait to hear more of this absurd understatement. He’s standing from his chair, lunging to his feet with absolute disregard for the protest of his knees and the cramps that have laid themselves into his thighs and back, and if they were enough to win a grimace from him when Pentecost was here the physical discomfort is as forgotten now as it was in the shadows of that alley. The curtain is nothing, all Hermann’s deliberate distance gives way without waiting for any permission to stride forward, and when he comes around the corner it’s with speed enough that he has to clutch at the support of the metal frame for the curtained-off barrier to stay on his feet instead of toppling to a collapse.

Newton is awake. More than that: Newton is sitting up in bed, one hand shoving through his hair while he pulls against the trailing end of an IV still in his arm. One of the nurses is reaching for his arm to pull it downward, another is urging against his shoulder, but he seems entirely unaffected by either of them, or too distracted to notice. One of his eyes is shot through with red from a burst blood vessel and his lip is swollen to asymmetry by a cut or a bruise against the top line of it; he’s covered with bandages, one wrapped around his head and at least a dozen peppering his arms, and the hospital gown they’ve drawn over his shoulders does nothing to lend him the appearance of health. He looks exactly like what he is, the victim of a chance encounter and his own self-destructive ability, and for all his protestations Hermann thinks Newton looks about as able to stand on his own feet as Hermann feels himself.

“Oh god,” Hermann says, and hears his voice quiver like a sob in his throat. “Newton.”

Newton’s head jerks around at once. His face looks strange; it takes Hermann a moment to realize it’s the absence of glasses that he’s noticing more than the bruises or the washed-out shade of the light filling the space. Newton’s myopic vision must be badly blurred without the assistance of his thick lenses, but apparently recognition is still well within the realm of his ability. His mouth tightens at the corner, his lips drag up towards a flicker of a smile before he flinches at the pull against his cut lip and straightens his expression. “Hiya Herms.” Newton swallows and grimaces with intention beyond just momentary pain in the expression. “Did Pentecost send someone to drag you out of your scholarly lair?”

Hermann shakes his head. For a moment it’s the best he can offer, with his throat knotted past easing by the threat of tears. “I’m the one who found you.”

It would be gratifying under any other circumstances to see the way Newton’s eyes widen, to see the flicker of overt shock across his face. With his eyes burning behind the barrier of his glasses Hermann just feels the familiarity of the expression like a blow to shake his already unsteady foundations, as if to drop his weak knees out from under him and send him to the floor at Newton’s bedside to decide at some later point if he will ever rise again. “Oh shit,” Newton mumbles, softly enough that Hermann doesn’t think he was really meant to hear. His mouth twists and he lifts a hand towards his hair again, although the habitual attempt to ruffle through the strands is somewhat countered by the stripe of white bandage cutting around his head. He ducks his face down to look at the thin of the hospital blanket drawn up over his legs instead of at Hermann’s face. “I didn’t mean for that to happen.”

“That much is obvious,” Hermann says. He means there to be a bite on the words but they shake apart into the rasp of near-tears instead; Newton’s head comes back up, his eyes going wide with something that Hermann thinks is best approximated by horror, but Hermann drags another breath for himself and goes on speaking without waiting for Newton to answer. “You _meant_ to take on a Kishin egg singlehandedly, without anyone there to back you up, without even a _meister_ to look after you, and you--!” Hermann’s voice dies, torn to silence on the strain of emotion in his throat, and for a moment he has to duck his head and struggle just to clear his breathing enough to go on speaking at all.

There’s a breath of perfect silence between them. Hermann’s ears are ringing with the pressure of his own racing heart and the heat of tears he is trying desperately to fight back; he can’t even spare a flicker of self-consciousness for the audience of the nurses lingering at the edges of the infirmary, caught up in this miniature drama he and Newton are acting out. Normally that would be enough to set Hermann’s teeth on the frustration that comes with being backed out of composure by some or another foolish decision on Newton’s part, but it’s not embarrassment that has such a vice grip around his chest, and it’s not for himself that Hermann feels so lightheaded with some agonizing mix of horror and relief in near-equal measures.

Against the backdrop of that expectation, Newton’s huff of an exhale comes as loud as a shout. “Jeez, Herms” and there’s something of his old tenor there, a gesture towards casual teasing that Hermann recognizes even with no more than the shell of the emotion to go on. “I knew you had to have _some_ kind of ambition in you, but I never figured you for the jealous type.” Hermann’s head comes up at once, his eyes opening wide with something impossibly balanced between confusion and outrage, but Newton’s not looking at him; he has his head ducked down to watch his fingers shifting at the edge of the sheet around him, where he’s tugging at the fabric with a weird, desperate tension to the motion. “I didn’t even _do_ that much, you know, it’s not like I stole any kind of glory. Ending up in a hospital bed from self-inflicted words isn’t much of a showing, it’s not like I was a real Death Weapon or anything.” Newton’s mouth twists onto the structure of a smile; it’s like the sketch of the thing without any of the substance to grant it true form. “Of the two of us here I’m pretty sure you end up looking like the real hero just in getting me back here, Hermann.”

 _I’m not jealous_ , Hermann wants to say; wants to spit the words free of his lips, wants to cough them into a laugh formed more from disbelief than humor. _I don’t care what people think. I care about--_ but the words stick in his chest, they fix themselves into a knot tight enough to stall his breathing, and Hermann ends up standing where he is, trapped to silence with his mouth open on the shape of the words he can’t seem to say, that Newton doesn’t look to see. There’s another beat, a pause long enough for the quiet to go shaky with discomfort before Newton coughs another laugh and hunches his shoulders in over his lap.

“I actually want to hear that story someday,” he says, pulling taut against the edge of the sheet where it’s caught under the weight of his leg. “How _did_ you get me back to the Academy? Did you call for help, or make a sled out of the library of books you carry on you at all times, or…?” as he finally lifts his head to meet Hermann’s gaze with that twist still firmly in place at his mouth, that shell of a smile that stops short of his dark eyes as surely as if it’s run up against a wall.

Hermann can’t find even the imitation of a smile to offer in response. “I’ll leave it to your _vivid_ imagination, Newton,” he says instead. “I’m sure you can entertain yourself better than I could do anyway.” Newton’s mouth shifts, his put-upon smile flickers, and that’s all Hermann can stand to see before he turns aside to move towards the edge of the curtain with a gait so stiff he imagines he can feel every eye on him like a weight of judgment. He doesn’t look around, doesn’t ask for help or wait for an offer of such; he just moves around the edge of the curtain, retreating back from that place he has wanted to be so badly for so many hours, that has become nothing more than a stage for the continuing farce of his existence.

His chair remains unoccupied, the hard plastic still as unyielding and uncomfortable as it has been for the hours before. Hermann lowers himself into it with more speed than grace, only refraining from an audible groan of pain by the white-lipped tension with which he keeps his mouth closed. He tightens his hold on the handle of his cane, rendered as unnecessary by his present position as he himself is by his own location, and he shuts his eyes, and bows his head, and feels the familiar bruise of hurt in every part of himself.


	10. Reflect

“I don’t get you, Herms.” Newton’s voice is pitched loud to carry clearly through the whole space of the infirmary, as if he is meaning to be heard by dozens instead of the single companion Hermann has provided over the last handful of days. “Why are you _here_? You’d be more comfortable in your classroom. Or at home, even. No one needs you here.”

“Thank you,” Hermann says without looking up from the sheaf of papers he’s spread out over the rickety folding table that he has made his new base of operations since Newton’s admission to the infirmary. “I do not require a reminder of my own uselessness, Newton.”

Newton throws his hands up from where he’s lying half-reclined on his hospital bed: the closest thing to the _complete rest_ the nurses ordered and that Hermann has made it his unofficial duty to see through. “I’m not trying to pick a fight,” he says, and when Hermann looks up at him over the top of his glasses: “Seriously, dude. Not that I wouldn’t be down for some dialogue here, since you won’t bring me my notes. Perhaps some scholarly debate would be to your liking? That’s got to appeal to the professor in you, man.”

“You are supposed to be resting,” Hermann tells him, and looks back to the papers in front of him without waiting to see the dramatic eyeroll this declaration gets him from Newton himself. “I’m not going to aid and abet in your constant efforts to skirt the edge of a rule put in place for your own benefit.”

Newton lets his hands drop heavily to the bed again and tosses himself back against the cushions with a sigh that speaks to the change in his ever-volatile moods swinging back around towards the shadows that seem to hold him as often as the frustratingly cheerful tack to which Hermann is more accustomed. It’s enough to draw Hermann’s gaze back up to the other, although he doesn’t raise his head to give away his concern, but Newton isn’t looking at him anyway. His head is turned towards the door, his gaze fixed on the one point of egress with a longing as clear on his face as if he’s looking at the photograph of a long-lost lover.

“It’s not like it makes a difference,” he says, the words as heavy under their own weight as if they’re made of lead. “The way things are going we’re all going to go crazy way before I have a chance to make the full recovery they want me to.”

Hermann’s skin goes cold, his heart clenches in his chest in spite of himself. He takes a silent breath to ease some of the strain in him before he makes the attempt to speak with as much calm logic as he can put on the words. “You’re being morbid again, Newton.”

“What else am I _supposed_ to be!” Newton cries, flaring up into a surge of temper as he twists to glare at Hermann alongside his bed. “Everyone who matters is out _there_ \--” with a gesture of his hand towards the clear of the windows that overlook the city far below, “--and I’m stuck here with a babysitter to keep me from hurting myself.”

“One you evidently need,” Hermann says, with more of a bite on the words than he fully intended to put there. “Given that the last time you were left to your own devices you tore yourself to shreds, I hardly think the concern is unjustified.”

“Stop talking like that,” Newton snaps, bringing his arm down to strike at the bed next to him with force enough to serve as punctuation. “I know you want to hide away in your tidy notes and your beautiful theories but there’s fighting out there, Hermann, there’s an _army_ of enemies and everyone we know is out resisting them while we sit here wrapped up in gauze. This is the fucking _apocalypse_ and you’re really content to sit there like a good student and take notes on it?”

“I am _not_ \--” Hermann begins, bracing a hand at the top of his desk to pin his papers in place and underline the force of his words, and there’s a _boom_ , a crack of sound loud as thunder a bare mile distant and bearing enough force to rattle the glass in the windows. Hermann flinches forward, hunching over his desk as if to protect himself as Newton throws up his arm to shield his face; for a moment there’s silence, the echoing aftereffects of the noise enough to hold them both speechless for the first breath of shock. Hermann lifts his head to look up at Newton, to find Newton gazing wide-eyed right back at him; and then there’s another bone-rattling sound, and they both move at once, Newton reaching to grab for the edge of his bed as Hermann lurches to his feet with the support of the desk under his hand. It takes him a moment to fumble for his cane -- it seems strange to find it right where he left it, with the sound so loud it feels like the earth is splitting apart -- but Hermann’s feet are moving him as quickly as he has the support to stay upright, pivoting sharply without concern for the spasm of pain the unbalanced motion jolts into his hip so he can cross the span of the room between his desk alongside Newton’s bed and the glass of the windows behind him.

He can see the fight before he reaches the frame. There is smoke hanging in the air, huge plumes of grey as if the remains from a thousand cannons all going off at once; as they still are, judging from the bursts of what must be explosions that keep tearing through the air. When he looks down there’s movement, a swirl of action and color so striking it takes his mind a moment to parse it into the violence it must be, the horror it truly is. The courtyard is full of people, all of them arrayed into a perimeter around the smooth-set stones that create the sweeping circle at the front of the school, all armed with the glint of weapons shining metal-bright in the morning light; and there is a shadow opposing them, a vast sea of formless shapes seething against that outside edge. Hermann’s head aches just to look at them: as fast as his eyes pick out arms, heads, legs, the whole shifts again, reforming into something entirely new, something almost but not quite humanoid, too slippery for his comprehension to grasp. Hermann has never seen a true Kishin egg with his own eyes before -- his attempted meisterdom failed him well before he was let loose to choose a mission of his own from that board at the front of the school -- but he thinks he would know them now even without the pages of illustrations he has consumed with such fervor, thinks he would recognize the semi-physical embodiment of Madness as some part of his soul itself flinching back from danger too obvious to give it a name beyond instinct.

“ _Oh_.” The voice makes Hermann jump, jerks his attention back up to the room he had completely forgot still surrounds him, and to the man now standing alongside him, leaning in towards the glass of the window as if answering a magnetic pull. Newton is still in his hospital gown, although he’s dragged free the IV needle that was stuck into his arm; Hermann can see the tape at the inside of the other’s elbow as Newton lifts a hand to touch against the window before him with breathless care under the motion of his fingertips. His throat works as he swallows; something flickers sunlight-bright under the skin of his knuckles. “It’s _beautiful_.”

“It’s horrible,” Hermann says; but it’s not really a protest as much as an addition, and Newton ducks his head in immediate capitulation without lifting his gaze from the writhing mass of humanity and weaponry and Madness below.

“Yeah,” he says, still sounding breathless. His palm touches the glass of the window, his fingers flex as if he’s straining for a handhold against the slick surface before closing in to make a fist of his grip. Newton struggles over a breath, audibly fighting for the air before he lets it go in a rush. There’s a weight to it, a force enough to speak as clearly as words would, if Hermann were blind enough to not see the daybreak light sparkling like electricity behind Newton’s eyes.

“I’m going,” Newton says, the words clear and decisive, and he turns at once, twisting on his heel to turn aside from the window as if he’s tearing himself free of some impossible lure. He takes a step forward, a full stride of deliberate action, and Hermann throws his hand out to clutch hard against Newton’s wrist.

“ _No_ ,” he says, almost shouting the word. Newton pauses to look down at Hermann’s hold on his wrist and Hermann drags hard against him, bracing himself with the other’s arm so he can lurch around to turn his back to the window and his gaze fully on Newton before him. “You will _not_.”

Newton looks up to meet Hermann’s gaze. His forehead creases, his mouth twists; for a moment he looks agonized, as if Hermann is twisting a knife into the midpoint of his chest. “I _have_ to,” he says, the words almost a sob. “I can feel it, Hermann, they’re calling me, they _need_ me.”

“What good will you do as a solo weapon?” Hermann asks. “You can’t even transform on your own without tearing yourself apart.”

“It would be worth it!” Newton insists, and drags at Hermann’s hold on his wrist. “Damn it, Hermann, I _have_ to go down there!”

“You’re not going anywhere,” Hermann says; and then he takes a breath, and he lifts his chin, and he speaks with all the clarity that he can put onto the sound of his own voice. “At least not alone you’re not.”

It’s to Newton’s credit how rapidly he parses the implication of Hermann’s words. His head snaps up, his arm goes limp in the other’s hold; for a moment he’s just staring at Hermann, all that electric need in his eyes burned away by shock to leave him nothing but himself, frustrating and brilliant and impossible and perfect as he gapes at Hermann like he’s never seen him before.

“I’m going with you,” Hermann tells him, taking this rare opportunity of Newton struck silent to clarify the details of his words. “You’re absolutely hopeless as a solo weapon. Perhaps you’ll do a bit better if you have a meister to look after you instead.”

“You’d--” Newton breathes, sounding like Hermann has knocked all the air clear out of his lungs. “You’d do that for me?” He blinks sharply, shakes his head like he’s trying to clear his thoughts; when he clears his throat his voice is a little lower, a little more composed. “I mean. You’d do that with me.”

Hermann musters the most casual shrug he can find when his whole body is prickling with the all-over heat of terrified anticipation. “Under the circumstances,” he says, “what choice do I have?” The words are harsh but his tone is as gentle as the fit of his fingers around Newton’s wrist, and when Newton’s shock-soft mouth turns up at the corner into a smile Hermann is surprised to realize it’s a mirror of his own.


	11. Point

They do not make good time.

It’s not from lack of effort. Hermann is moving as quickly as he can, propelling himself forward down the span of the corridor with more attention to the adrenaline thrumming through his veins than the ache at his knee or the tremor in legs voicing a protest to this too-much that he’s demanding of them, and Newton is no more sedate, for all that he still has a bandage wrapped around his forehead and that the t-shirt he claimed from a bin of jumbled clothes in the infirmary leaves the scabbed cuts all across his arms plain to see. In truth it’s Newton Hermann is more worried about than himself, under the circumstances, but there’s a feverish light glittering behind the other’s dark eyes, even with his vision still blurred in the absence of his glasses, and Hermann might be able to stay on his feet but he’s very sure he can’t offer the physical restraint that it would take to keep Newton down now. And more immediately there’s a very simple, straightforward reason why Hermann doesn’t argue with Newton stumbling down the corridor towards what is sure to be a fight far too much for the both of them, and that’s that he doesn’t want to.

Hermann can’t remember the last time he felt like this. It’s been years, he’s sure; he’s spent a decade burying the memory of this feeling, crushing out the flicker of hope that always burns him worst in its guttering death than in anything else. He has given up optimism, has set aside anticipation, has retreated to the safety of certainty and fact and cold, unfeeling truth just for the foundation it grants to his life, the basis it lends to his own existence. But that optimism is back now, like a Madness of its own working through his veins as surely as the possibility of metal flows through Newton’s, and as they stumble mismatched steps down the hallway Hermann is gazing ahead more than he’s looking at Newton, as caught up in the thrill of what might be waiting for them as in worry for the relative health of the companion limping at his side.

The Academy is deserted. The infirmary is far from the main hallways of the school, deliberately isolated to provide a sense of peace and remove for those who should be focusing on recovery instead of their studies, but even as they make their way towards the expansive entrance courtyard and to the fringes of the more distant classrooms there is no one around them, not so much as a whisper of existence to fill the halls with anything but the scuff and drag of their own footsteps. Hermann thinks it could be just the two of them in the whole of the world, as if they have become tourists wandering the shining halls of the ghost town stripped of its residents at once; except, of course, for the sound.

The booms haven’t eased since their departure from the infirmary. Hermann is trying not to think about them, trying not to measure their relative frequency and intensity, as his own perceptions are far too clearly biased by adrenaline and fear and excitement all together, but whatever else they may be they are certainly unceasing, offering no more than a few breaths of tense silence between each one before another hits to rattle the focus out of Hermann’s head and the balance out from under Newton’s feet. Hermann doesn’t think he could quantify the strength of them even if he tried; when every echoing _boom_ is too much, all he can do is cringe through the sound and weight of each, as the presence of each one makes itself felt as much as heard. It sounds like the Academy is about to collapse in atop them and bury them both in its rubble; it feels like the earth is cracking open under their feet, giving way to the blows of some impossible creature to crack straight down to a fiery core to rise up and spill the whole surface of everything to new-made smooth. Hermann’s heart is pounding in instinctive terror, his ears are aching with the continued abuse ringing through the air around them, and when the next shuddering jolt hits the floor jumps so badly that Hermann’s cane skids against it. Hermann catches himself, if at the cost of a strained shoulder and an aching knee, but without the extra stability of a cane Newton falls outright, slipping to tumble onto the smooth of the floor under them.

Hermann can hear the huff of air in Newton’s lungs as the other lands against the unforgiving surface and he turns as quickly, pivoting at his cane to struggle forward the half-step to where Newton is sprawling over the floor and trying to brace a hand against the surface to get himself up. Hermann locks his shoulder against the support of his cane and leans in to offer a hand; Newton takes it without protest, clutching against Hermann’s wrist and pulling so hard Hermann isn’t sure for a moment they won’t both end up on the floor instead of achieving their goal. He leans back, gritting his teeth at the weight dragging against him, and Newton stumbles to his feet to stand in front of him, although his grip on Hermann’s wrist lingers instead of falling away as he gains his own legs. His palms are bigger than Hermann had realized; Newton’s grip wraps entirely around Hermann’s wrist, even over the weight of the jacket across the other’s shoulders.

“An excellent pair we make,” Hermann says, still offering resistance under Newton’s hold to brace the other steady. “Neither of us can so much as stand on our own. What good are we even going to manage down there?”

Newton shakes his head hard. “You’ve got it all wrong, Herms,” he says, his voice as bright and brittle as the light in his eyes. He’s trembling, Hermann can feel the thrumming working through that hold at his arm; it’s as if Newton is overflowing with energy, as if there’s too much intensity in him to even calm himself to a deep breath. “That’s why we’re going to be heroes. We’ve got our own skill set to offer, we could be the force that turns the tide!” He flickers a grin; it’s wild and frantic, but there’s a sincerity to it all the same, even as he leans in closer to draw Hermann into his myopic focal range. “You can’t give up before we’ve even begun.”

“I’m not giving up,” Hermann informs him. “I’m simply being rational about our actual chances of efficacy.”

“That’s what trips you up,” Newton tells him. “You can’t fight a Kishin with _reason_ . It’s like. It’s the living embodiment of Madness, reason is exactly what it wants you to apply, it’ll eat that for breakfast and not even get indigestion. You gotta come at it with _heart_ , man, you gotta be crazy brave instead.”

“This is certainly crazy,” Hermann says, but it’s not truly a protest; he’s smiling in spite of everything, in spite of the ache in his whole body and the throb of sound like some horrible, monstrous heartbeat intent on beating down the walls of his Academy and the vanishingly slim odds that he or Newton or anyone is going to survive this encounter. “I cannot speak to the courage as yet--”

“No,” Newton says, speaking loud to talk right atop Hermann’s caveats. “No, dude, you have to _own_ it.” He lets Hermann’s wrist go to lift his hand out and extend over the space between them. “Say it with me, my man. We’re going to kick the Kishin’s _ass_!”

Hermann considers Newton’s upraised hand. It’s angled between them, the whole line of the other’s arm adding meaning to the gesture; Hermann is fairly sure he’s never been sufficiently young enough to actually manage the particular kind of energy Newton is exuding from every pore. But when he looks up Newton is looking at him, his eyes wide and his grin bright and lopsided, and Hermann finds himself smiling in answer, his mouth curving as if of its own volition to match his expression to Newton’s even as he reaches up to fumble for some kind of a hold against the offered hand.

“Yes,” he says, struggling the more with fitting his hand against Newton’s because he can’t quite pull his gaze away from those bright eyes to actually watch what he’s doing as he does it. “We’re going to...we’re certainly going to emerge victorious from the conflict!”

Newton’s grin breaks wide, splitting into a full-blown laugh as he clasps his hand around Hermann’s and pulls to fit their forearms together too. Hermann would usually flinch from the sound of that amusement, that humor that always comes with mockery on it, but with Newton so close all he can feel is the warmth running through him, the texture of Newton’s palm against his and the support of the arm pressing to his sleeve. Their hands are clasped with their partner’s opposite, their arms interlinking to hold them together; they’re so close that Hermann can see the clarity in Newton’s gaze, can parse the focus in the other’s eyes as Newton’s attention skims down over his features, along his jawline and touching at his neck and trailing across his mouth. Hermann’s lashes weight, angling under the burden of their own shadow as his attention dips down, as his focus slips by an inch; and then Newton’s head turns, his attention jerking away as if someone has shouted his name, and a heartbeat later Hermann hears the growl of a vibration ripple through the length of the hallway around them.

He doesn’t want to turn. He doesn’t want to see, doesn’t want to know; but the not-knowing is worse, bearing the horror of a nightmare glimpsed but not understood, and fear is too strong a force to keep Hermann’s sight hidden by the safety of shut eyes. His head turns, his attention trailing Newton’s in this as much as everything, and as he looks he sees, and all the glow of courage in him flickers like a candleflame caught in a sudden gust.

It’s not the Kishin. That much Hermann is sure of: it would be worse, if it were the Kishin, if it were the full height of their opponent standing before them. This is something smaller, an Egg at most or maybe just a single corrupted soul, so small to have slipped free of the curve of protection the meisters and weapons are forming at the front of the school. They’re not wrong to not worry; there’s no one in the Academy at all, that Hermann can tell, nothing but starving emptiness for something that feeds as much on its prey’s fear as on its actual physicality. Cleaning up something like this can come later, after the main fight is won or lost; and so here it is, with limbs half again as long as they should be and eyes as blank and empty as gazing into a void enough to make a moonless night seem midday and a mouth gaping wide on tarry liquid Hermann doesn’t want to look at too closely. It’s taller than him, almost twice his height even with shoulders slumping heavy as if borne down by some impossible weight; it looks incapable of moving quickly, as if even the smallest step must be a burden for it. But it’s looking at them -- at _Newton_ \-- gazing straight back into the other’s wide-eyed stare like it can see into the core of who he is, and was, and will ever be. Hermann stares at it for a moment, feeling his heart pound and his blood curdle in his veins; and then he swallows hard, and turns his head to look at Newton before him.

“Newton,” Hermann says, speaking in a tone no less intent for how soft the words are. “Transform.”

“Shit,” Newton breathes, and Hermann doesn’t know if it’s terror at his lips or thrilling excitement and he doesn’t ask. Newton stares up at the thing before them, looking entranced, as if he’s a bird locked in place by a snake’s unflinching gaze; but just as Hermann takes a breath to speak again, more firmly, Newton ducks his head and shuts his eyes in surrender. His skin begins to shine, throwing off illumination as if he’s lit from the inside: but it’s not just his skin, it’s the tangle of his hair and the scabs at his arms and even the ratty t-shirt over his shoulders. Newton is glowing, all of him, his whole existence throwing off light that Hermann can see spilling through the fingers of his hand clasped tight around the other’s; and then Newton’s grip tightens at Hermann’s hand, and he starts to transform.

Hermann can see it happening. The illumination clinging to Newton’s body expands, flaring to blinding white for a heartbeat of time until Hermann flinches and has to turn away from the aching hurt of too-much bright, but their hands stay clasped and he can feel the shift of Newton’s body changing, reforming itself into something different, into the shape of the weapon he has always struggled to make of himself. The fingers in his hand slide, transforming as if reaching out to intertwine themselves fully between Hermann’s; but then they pull back, slipping away like mercury, and Hermann looks back in the first jolt of something going wrong.

Newton is transforming; or, rather, Newton is _trying_ to transform. He’s still glowing, still throwing off that light enough to burn instant tears into Hermann’s eyes as he tries to look at the other head-on; but the shape of his body is flickering, morphing and distorting as he tries to lay claim to the weapon form that has been so hard for him to take in the past. His hand is going metal-cold in Hermann’s grip, chilling like the heat is spilling from it over the points of the form flickering too close under still-present skin to keep from tearing it, and what Hermann can see of his face is set into a rictus of pain, gritting against the line of his jaw and cording the tendons at his neck. His lashes flutter heavy over his unfocused eyes, his mouth comes open, and then:

“ _Hermann_ ” and it’s almost a scream, something between a wail and a plea in a weird, raw resonance that Hermann feels all down his spine and thrumming into his blood. “ _Help me_.”

“What?!” Hermann blurts. “What do I do, I don’t know _how_ to help you.” But he’s tightening his grip anyway, seizing crushing force against Newton’s hand in his as he rocks in, as he reaches out with body and mind and soul, and it’s just as he makes contact that he realizes what he’s doing, that he has time for a single spasm of terrified epiphany before Resonance sweeps up and over him.

It hits at once. There’s no space, no easing into it, no time for either of them to brace themselves; there’s just the rush of _connection_ , of latching onto each other with force enough to blur every line between them. Hermann remembers the agony of transformation, of half-turned bones trying to tear free of fragile human skin, feels the pain of it as vividly as if it is his own recollection; but he’s reliving his own life too, flickering back over the array of dark eyes staring back at him, a lineup of every weapon he ever tried to partner with, every partner he put in the hospital when their Resonance tore free from them both. The agony of a shattered knee, the sound of a child screaming as spikes tore free of his arm, leg, chest: Hermann doesn’t know which is which, can’t recall which of those are his own and which are Newt’s. It feels like falling, like spiraling down into some vast, unknowable darkness, some endless horror waiting to swallow them up with the impossibility of its existence, and for a moment Hermann can feel himself jerking back, can feel an animalistic instinct to run from such danger seizing control of his hindbrain to drag him free of the connection. He can’t stay, he’ll die, he’ll lose himself, he will tear himself apart and he will tear Newt apart and he will--and then the adrenaline hits, and Hermann loses all his breath as the surge of Newt’s presence swings high within his own psyche.

Newt is _delighted_. Hermann is terrified, Hermann is clutching white-knuckled for every inch of traction he can gain on the edge of a crumbling cliff-face; but Newt is alight, is glowing with adrenaline, with reckless pleasure, with the excitement of facing and conquering and knowing everything that hasn’t been touched before. He’s spilling into Hermann, his mind reaching out for Hermann’s own with desperate need, and Hermann is sure, absolutely, that that near-frantic anxiety for connection is exactly as much his own as it is Newt’s. They are different straight through, opposites on every point Hermann can think of; but Newt is reaching, and Hermann is wanting, and when he shuts his eyes it’s to let his hold on his cane go, his hold on the cliff go, so he can reach out and clasp Newt’s hand in his own.

Resonance breaks like the dawn. Illumination behind their eyelids, glowing brighter than anything they’ve ever seen; but no pain, now, not with all of their body flickering with that same incandescent warmth. They gasp a breath, dragging it into their lungs against the premonition of pain; but there is no pain, there is no collapse, there is none of the failure some part of them had been afraid for. There is stability, sure and certain and firm in every part of them, and when they opens their eyes they can feel the weight of it as if grounding them where they stands, where they _are_ standing, firm and fixed in their position in the middle of the hallway. There’s a weight around their hands, metal clasping close against every finger like a set of linked rings expanding to the sharp points of brass knuckles to point out like spines when they close their grip into a pair of fists: as they can, with both hands free. Their feet are planted solidly, a wide stance in the corridor that will keep them locked in place against any attack, and more: there’s a clasp of metal running all the way up one leg, like the outline of a robotic exoskeleton claiming just one knee to brace against their thigh and latch them to the floor, where those same spikes have dug into the tile as deep as roots reaching for rich earth. They considers their position, the stance of their legs and the curl of their fingers, and then they turn out to face the opponent, the Kishin Egg still standing in the corridor watching them.

“Come on,” they say, and their voice is strange, deep and purring in their chest with conflicting tones, with overlapping voices melding into one rich sound. “We’re ready for you.” They don’t know which part of them is speaking -- the tense anxious part pushed too far, or a reckless enthusiasm barely tamped down into a steady path -- but it doesn’t matter, because the enemy is showing all its teeth, flashing brilliant white as it opens a maw that expands like it means to swallow the entire world, and they’re locked in place and raising both their hands as if in imitation of a boxer that they’ve never been. They close their hands tight -- shift to slide their thumbs out from under their fingers, with some awareness learned by book or experience, they don’t know which -- and then the Kishin Egg is on them, and they’re drawing back and swinging forward, the motion familiar in their head and awkward in their body. That mouth stretches wide, reaching down to swallow them whole, to envelop the unified whole that they have made of themself; and the metal around their knuckles flares, spilling illumination like rays of sunlight bursting from their body to impale the creature before them on every brittle-sharp point. They open their eyes wide, open their mouth to speak; and Resonance overflows from them, washing out from the connection of those spears of light running through the monster before them.

 _No_ , they think, _no yes don’t do what are_ \-- and then the Kishin bursts into their head, Madness black as midnight cascading over them like an overturned inkwell, and their mouth comes open to scream and their lungs fill with liquid and they’re choking, they’re drowning they’re breathing they’re screaming they’re moaning, they’re themself and himself and it and them and there are _things_ in their head, under their skin, crawling like the weapon in them has been given spirit of its own and means to tear itself free, as if the brittle of their bones has crumbled to dust and the hollow space filled with plasma-black, the strings of a puppet running through the structure of their existence to make a mockery of their independence. They’re seeing everything, nothing, light and blindness and the flicker of bright that comes with the weight of palms pressing over aching eyes, their teeth ache like copper and their lungs are choking on blood and on their tongue there’s the taste of acid, the crack of electricity, something wet and slippery crawling down their throat and taking over them and--

Hermann throws himself backwards, recoiling physically from the connection they have accidentally made. The Kishin Egg convulses, ripples like water cascading over its surface, but Hermann doesn’t know if it’s death throes or the satisfaction impending victory coursing through it and he can’t wait to be sure. He’s on the floor, his hip spiking pain through his whole body from his clumsy landing on his no-longer supported bad leg, but it’s not the pain that is churning nausea through his stomach and casting white-out horror through his mind. He can still taste it on his tongue, can still _feel_ it in his stomach, and when he twists over to vomit helplessly onto the floor he half-expects to see some crawling thing come out of his mouth, some oily match for the creature in front of him. There’s bile, certainly, bitter and burning pain at the back of his throat and over his tongue, but Hermann goes on heaving for long seconds, until even the instinctive revulsion in him is satisfied that his hallucination was no more than just that. He gasps for breath, eyes watering and throat burning and shoulders shaking where he’s bracing himself on his arms; and then he pushes against the floor to turn around and look back to the location of their fight.

The Kishin Egg is gone. Hermann deduced that much already; the mere fact that he’s still breathing is reasonable proof for their victory, given how utterly incapacitated his own roiling stomach rendered him for the last minute. There is a soul floating where it was, blood-red and pulsing slightly, but Hermann doesn’t look at it for long; the throbbing motion of it is too close to a heartbeat and clenches his already emptied stomach all over again. He turns away instead, tipping his head to the other side, where Newt is leaning forward over his sprawled-open knees and staring into the distance like he’s seeing something where there is nothing at all. His nose is bleeding, trickling dark over his lip and off his chin to the floor, but he doesn’t reach to wipe it; he doesn’t seem aware of it at all.

“Newt,” Hermann says, or attempts to say. His voice is burnt raw by acid and what comes out is closer to a croak than anything substantial, but he’s pushing himself forward anyway, bracing a hand at the floor to slide towards Newt directly since he isn’t at all sure he can trust his feet at the moment. “ _Newt_.” Newt goes on staring without response, eyes wide and blank of any sign of recognition; it’s only when Hermann draws near enough to reach and touch at his shoulder that Newt sucks in a sharp breath and jerks into motion so sudden Hermann wonders if he had remembered the other’s presence at all. His hand comes up as if to push Hermann’s arm away but Newt turns it to a grab instead, his fingers closing as tight at Hermann’s elbow as if he’s determined to brace him in place.

“Hermann,” Newt croaks, sounding as though he’s been screaming, as though he’s blown his voice out on too-much volume torn past too-human vocal chords. “Did you--did you _see_ that? Did you _feel_ it?”

Hermann nods. “Of course I did, I was right there with you.” He’s fumbling in his pocket with his free hand but he can’t look away from Newt’s face in front of him to look at what he’s doing. “Are you alright?”

“It was amazing,” Newt says without showing any sign of even having heard Hermann’s question. “Transforming entirely like that. I’ve never done that, did you know? And you were right there and when we hit that Kishin Egg--”

Hermann’s stomach roils again. “You’re bleeding,” he says, in a hasty attempt to stave off whatever reminiscence Newt might want to glow over before his own nausea makes a reappearance. He pulls the handkerchief he’s been struggling with free of his pocket and presses it to the spill of blood over Newt’s face. “Tip your head back.” Newt does that much, at least, acting with the unthinking obedience of a child ordered by a parent, but his eyes are still unfocused, his attention still obviously far distant.

“We won,” he says, his voice somewhat muffled by the weight of Hermann’s hand at his nose but still carrying the shocked-open weight of disbelief on it. “We _won_.” He turns sharply towards Hermann, his eyes brightening as he shakes at his hold on the other’s elbow. “We’re _heroes_!”

“That’s as may be,” Hermann says, pushing hard against the dark-stained cloth to urge Newt’s head back again. Newt lifts his hand to take the weight of the handkerchief as some of his presence of mind returns and Hermann lets it go, although he maintains his grip at the other’s shoulder. “We could be supermen and it does us no good at all if the war is lost.”

That brings some clarity to Newt’s face at last. His shocked smile eases, his eyes focus properly on Hermann’s face. For a moment they stare at each other, bloody and bruised and generally showing all the damage of their efforts; then Newt swallows hard and finds voice to speak.

“We have to tell them.” He lets his hold on Hermann’s elbow go so he can wave his hand in the general direction of the front of the Academy; it’s a meaningless gesture but one Hermann understands well enough, given that his own vision is still hazed over with the shining arcs of light he saw as clearly as Newt, in that moment of nauseating, terrifying, glorious connection with the monster they fought and, by extension, the whole of the writhing mass of Madness that is threatening the sanctity of the school itself. “Pentecost and them. They don’t know.”

Hermann ducks his head in surrender, in agreement, in capitulation. “They think they’re fighting single opponents,” he says, his voice hoarse on the horror of his own realization, now, more than the ache of acid still burning the back of his throat. “They’ll be trying to take them on one at a time.”

“They’ll fail,” Newt says, gaining speed for his words until they’re tumbling one atop the other almost out of order. “They’re going to have to come at them all at once--”

“--in order to win,” Hermann finishes for him. His fingers tighten at Newt’s shoulder. “We have to tell them.”

Newt ducks his head into a nod, aggressive in his agreement in total disregard of the black-stained handkerchief he has pressing to his bleeding nose. “What are we waiting for then?” he asks, and gets to his feet with such haste that Hermann isn’t sure he’s going to be able to keep to them. Newt does stumble a step, wobbling precariously before he catches himself, but it doesn’t stop him reaching out to offer his free hand to Hermann even as he wipes his face more-or-less clean. “No time to waste, we’ve gonna save the world!”

Hermann looks up at Newt standing over him: bloodstained, wild-eyed, as unsteady on his feet as Hermann feels himself to be most of the time, and wearing a grin so wide and bright it tips over the edge of optimism and into reckless mania. And then he lifts his hand, and clasps his hold around Newt’s wrist, and lets himself be drawn to his feet by the counterbalance of the hand gripping fever-warm against his own skin.

Between them, he thinks, they might be almost balanced.


	12. Connect

They run into problems as soon as they’re both back on their feet.

It seems like an easy undertaking. They both know these halls, after all, and between the two of them Hermann feels they ought to be able to cover the distance between any two points of the evidently empty Academy with relative ease. But his leg is aching worse than he can recall it ever hurting before, sharp, stabbing pains that jolt from his knee all the way up to spear deep into the joint of his hip, and even with his cane reinstated and Newt at his side to catch him Hermann feels sure his forward progress is more of a hobble than anything that could reasonably merit the title of a walk.

And then there’s Newt. He’s on his feet, to be sure, and somewhat steadier on them than Hermann is on his own; but his gaze is distant, his attention scattered, and Hermann is spending so much time frowning concern at his companion that his forward motion becomes all the more difficult. Newt’s nose has stopped bleeding, for the most part, but he’s still keeping Hermann’s handkerchief for himself, and even his hasty effort to stuff it into his pocket hasn’t hid the fact that the liquid staining it is absolute, vivid black, rather than the dried-dark red Hermann would expect. Hermann has never been very good at understanding what is going on in Newt’s head, even on the best of days; right now he’s almost afraid to ask, for what kind of an answer he might receive. He has no real choice anyway: even with his cane he can’t keep his feet on his own, and Newt’s bracing arm around his waist is the only thing holding them upright even if it shakes and trembles as if with earthquakes in echo of whatever is happening out at the front of the school. The best Hermann can find for himself is to fix his eyes on the hallway before him, and turn his attention to moving forward by another step, by another stride, by the distance of another foot with each painful motion; and that proves enough to bear them both forward, at least to the end of the hallway.

It’s a long hallway. Hermann is trembling by the end of it, his whole body quivering with a strain to which he doesn’t want to give voice; not that is makes much of a difference, under the circumstances. Newt is close enough to notice the struggle Hermann is under with every step; Hermann doesn’t know what he would prefer, to have his physical weakness laid so obviously bare for the other’s knowledge or for Newt to be so lost in whatever that wild gaze is seeing that he doesn’t notice the patently obvious fact of the other’s exhaustion. Hermann tries not to think about it, the same way he tries not to think about the distance they have yet to travel, the expanse still stretching before them; and then Newt stumbles to a halt, and Hermann looks up, and he can feel all his determination give way from him at once.

“Oh no,” he breathes, all his sense of dignity forgotten, all his rigid self-assurance giving way to this last, impossible barrier stretching away before him. His fingers twist on Newt’s shirt, struggling for a grip for a moment; and then let go, his arm falling slack as his legs tremble to give up their support. “I can’t do this.”

“What?” Newt blurts, sounding shocked enough to more than answer Hermann’s earlier concern about where his attention has been and what he has noticed. Hermann’s knees give way, folding to drop him to the ground, but Newt doesn’t let him go, just drops as if his own limbs are melting their strength away as rapidly so he ends up kneeling on the floor alongside Hermann, one arm still caught under the other’s and bracing around his back. “What are you talking about Hermann? We have to, we have to get down there. They need us, they’re waiting for us Herms, we can’t just give up.”

“I’m _not_ ,” Hermann snaps, and reaches to shove away Newt’s grabbing fingers working against the front of his jacket. “It’s not a matter of _giving up_ , Newt. I _cannot_ make it down those stairs.”

“Just try,” Newt wheedles, as if physical weakness might be a function of Hermann’s mind, as if he might be able to overcome his own limitations just by an additional exertion of will. “It’s just a few steps, you can make it, we have to get down to the front, we--” but Hermann is shaking his head, and Newt’s words fall to silence at the negation of the other’s gesture.

“I cannot,” he says, speaking more softly than he did before, feeling the weight of the words resonate themselves into the bitter taste of failure down in the very core of his being. “I want to. I wish I could.” He lifts his hand from his side, reaching as if to grasp for the support of Newt’s shoulders again; but his leg spasms with a burst of pain, and his hand falls instead, clutching with helpless force at the other’s black-stained shirtfront as Hermann grimaces through a wave of hurt to which he refuses to give voice. Hermann squeezes his eyes shut, ducking his head to hide his face from Newt’s wide-eyed shock; even after the pain eases he keeps his head down, only because it’s easier to find voice for himself when he’s not looking into the impossible optimism of Newt’s face. “I cannot go with you, Newt.”

“You have to,” Newt says. His voice is very soft; Hermann has never before heard him sound so gentle, has never heard his frantic energy so muted. “Hermann, my dude, my man, my Herms, I can’t…I can’t keep on alone.”

Hermann shakes his head. “You have to,” he says, and drags his hand away from Newt’s shirt to fall to his lap. It takes conscious effort; even then, he thinks he barely succeeds in drawing away. “You have to warn Pentecost, you have to tell everyone. This is your chance, Newt, you’re going to be a hero for this.”

Newt’s laugh hasn’t changed, at least. It’s still the same raw desperation Hermann has always known it to be, still grates rough in the back of his throat until it sounds closer to a sob than the amusement as which it masquerades. “Yeah,” he says, sarcasm dragging rough over his tongue. “Sure, yeah, go down there and leave you all alone, that’s _real_ heroic.”

“Sacrifices have to be made,” Hermann tells him, and finally lifts his head to meet Newt’s gaze with the weight of his own fixed attention. “You can’t give up the fate of the world because of one old man, Newt, you’re a _weapon_.”

“I _am_ ,” Newt almost shouts. “And you’re my _meister_ , Herms, I can’t just _leave_ you.” There’s an edge to his voice, a shrill desperation that cuts Hermann deep, but even that isn’t as deep as that title that he has ached for for so long, that he has resigned himself to being as far out of reach as the stars spangling the sky overhead, now offered up with instant familiarity at the lips of the man who has been a constant burden to the calm of his existence, who has imposed himself into every aspect of Hermann’s life, who is…

“They have to know,” Hermann says, putting as much authority on his voice as he can find even as he’s sure it won’t be enough, even as Newt is already shaking his head in rejection. “One of us has to get the information to them and I can’t make it, Newt, it _has_ to be you.”

“ _No_ ,” Newt says again, as if he can reject the structure of the world by main force, as if he can unravel the limitations of their present via his own stubborn insistence. “I’m not going, I’m not leaving. Whatever we do we’re doing together.” For a moment he meets Hermann’s gaze, his forehead creased and mouth set on the absolute determination that Hermann has never been able to overrule before; then his face eases, his eyes open wide, and his whole expression falls into such slack shock that Hermann’s shoulders tense with fear of an entirely different kind than what he has been experiencing.

“Oh,” Newt says, sounding starstruck as he stares through Hermann before him, looking as transcendent as if he’s seeing his salvation coming for him down the hallway Hermann sincerely hopes is as empty as he believes it to be. “That’s _it_.”

“What’s it?” Hermann asks, because he can’t _not_ ask, even if he’s more than a little afraid of what answer he’s going to get. He reaches out to rest his fingers at the edge of Newt’s shirt, in easy range of a grab if he needs to make one, although he doesn’t know what he could possibly do to achieve victory in a physical altercation. “Newt?”

“Together,” Newt repeats, and then he blinks and his eyes refocus on Hermann’s, dark and overbright but more sane than Hermann had been afraid to see, more focused than he had expected. “As partners, Herms, we can get the information to them right now!”

Hermann frowns. “Newt, I have _no_ idea what you’re talking about.”

“Resonance,” Newt says, and drops Hermann’s shoulder to grab for his hand instead. “We can Resonate. You, and me, and then with everyone else, we can get them the information that way.”

Hermann reels back. “ _What_ ,” he blurts. “I can’t--I don’t know how to do that, Newt.”

“You do,” Newt presses. “You read about it all the time, this is what you teach isn’t it? Meisters and Resonating, it’s supposed to work with compatible partners but we’re that, for sure, that’s what that was back there wasn’t it?” Hermann grimaces, his stomach roiling at the reminder of the writhing shadows that swept over his psyche the moment he and Newt hit the Kishin Egg, but Newt is still talking, his words speeding into haste as his fingers tighten on Hermann’s hand. “We were Resonating, and then you hit that monster and we started Resonating with _it_ , too, and boy that was wild but if you can Resonate with a Kishin you can Resonate with the other meisters, can’t you? Like Mako, Mako’s down there, I’m sure you have like. Whatever studious thing you’ve both got going on, that’s gotta be enough to connect.”

Hermann grimaces again, though he doesn’t try to pull free of Newt’s hold. “Newt, I don’t think--”

“I mean,” Newt is going on. “I mean I probably was the connection for that Kishin Egg, right? Like. You’re sane as sane can be but me, ha, everyone knows I’m a little off-kilter, right, that was definitely me accidentally, like, mind-melding to it, sorry. But if it’s just us and you--”

“ _Newt_ ” and it’s almost a shout, for the volume Hermann finds from somewhere in his chest. It’s enough to be heard, at least, over the tumble of the words spilling past Newt’s lips; and it’s enough to knock the other into silence for a moment of wide-eyed shock.

They stare at each other for a moment, Hermann’s jaw set and Newt’s lips parted; then Newt closes his mouth, and blinks, and speaks. “Did you just call me Newt?”

“I did,” Hermann says. “Which would seem to indicate some rather alarming things about the effect of Resonating with you.” He blinks and lifts his chin. “Apparently extending to a truly absurd recklessness regarding life decisions.”

Newt’s eyes go wide. “What? You--are you--”

Hermann shifts his hand in Newt’s, turning his fingers so he can interlace them with the pressure of the other’s grip rather than just holding onto his hand. Newt’s gaze drops to their interlocked fingers, looking as startled as if Hermann had just proposed marriage, but Hermann doesn’t hesitate in speaking again.

“Newt,” he says, his voice startlingly clear in his own ears. “Transform.” Newt lifts his head to stare at Hermann’s face, to gaze wide-eyed into the force of the other’s attention; and then he shuts his eyes, and ducks his head, and Hermann watches the brilliant light of transformation sweep up and over to eclipse the whole of the man sitting on the floor in front of him. For a moment Newt glows with light, all of his body throwing off radiance like he’s making a second sun of himself; then his form blurs, the shape of his body shifts to give way, and Hermann shuts his eyes and reaches out for him. His fingers tighten on Newt’s hand, closing hard as if to lock them together, and then Newt’s fingers shift, his grip reforming itself around Hermann’s knuckles, and Hermann’s sense of himself slips forward and over the edge to spill seamlessly into that weight of metal around his fingers.

It’s easier, this time. There had been panic, before, adrenaline coursing into desperation as much as the brilliant, manic thrill of a joy too great to be contained within the shape of one single existence; but this time Resonance breaks like an unseen dawn, illuminating the world without any need for the guidance or approval of an outside audience. They fall into each other, spiraling past details and memories that carry as little weight as anything made familiar by repetition, and even what distance-dull hurt comes with some of them is lost as soon as felt, melted away by the warmth of a dawn he never expected to come. There’s a breath of time like that, a heartbeat of settling into the feel of an aching body, into the form of metal foreign and yet as impossibly familiar as his physical form, maybe more familiar than what clumsy limbs and flailing motions have always made of his intention; but there isn’t time to linger in appreciation of this moment, however glowing-warm it may be, and when their attention swings out and wide it’s with the guidance of both parts in perfect unity behind it.

There is no one in the halls around them. That is a relief; they don’t know if they could hold onto the Resonance guiding their awareness and shaping their form if they were to run up against another surge of that endless darkness, even in passing. The thought alone quivers through their present identity, shaking against the structure of their self like the vibration of sound chiming through a bell, and they let the fear go, acting with the rationality one side brings and the absolute commitment the other influence carries. They know what they’re looking for, in any case, even if the concept of physical space no longer carries a meaning; they can feel the fighting, the tumult of souls and violence and fear at a distance if they strain. There’s too much for them to cross, too great a span for them to reach over; but _why do the walls matter_ , a thought murmurs into their head, and the whole of the world quivers around them, easing itself into a different format than anything they have every known before. The restrictions of a physical form don’t apply any more than the familiar ache of their bad knee need restrict them, and when they sweep forward again it’s with the simple joy of easy motion under it, like the thrill of a child running down a hill just for the pleasure of the action.

It’s startling to burst out over the fight. There is chaos, to their Perception-bright eyes, spreading and tangling all across the courtyard: dozens of soul wavelengths, separate and melding and bleeding into the shadows circling around them in too many places. They go still, caught in the sight of something more beautiful than they had thought existed, more bone-deep terrifying than they could imagine, and again something stirs in them, a voice as much a part of them as it is separate, a part of their own identity as surely as the breathless appreciation of the beauty of Soul Perception before them.

 _Find Mako_ , that thought reminds, with an acerbic edge that would be familiar if it weren’t part of their own voice as much as it is heard. _Where is she?_ It’s hard to look at the wavelengths below, hard to focus on them for any length of time: the longer they look the more they see black encroaching, as if the shadows of the Kishin forming such a looming wall of threat are reaching out to steal away all the sunlight from the fighters below. There is black everywhere, seeping through the circle of meisters and reaching for the Academy, stretching out desperate tendrils as if to lay claim to the pillars and drag them down by sheer force; and it’s then that they see it, the flare of brilliant red like a flower blooming into the middle of an endless night. It’s Mako, of course it is, matched with the solid certainty of a wavelength they don’t recognize; but it must be her, they know the vivid potential of that wavelength without ever having seen it with their physical eyes. She’s there, fighting for all their lives with all the determined force in her; and they reach out, and Resonance breaks over them like a wave.

It’s different, this time. Shifting into sync with themselves -- with the other part of themselves -- was a rush of sensations, two histories blending and tangling with each other until they can’t say, now, which is which. The Kishin Egg was something else, invasive and parasitic and reaching to tear free their very existence from its moorings as surely as those shadows are now reaching for the front of the school. But when they touch against the heartbeat glow of that steady wavelength the connection forms at once, linking them together as if pressing a window into the space between them without bleeding memories over one into the other. They remember this, from one or the other of their histories, remember this sense of connection over some deliberate distance: it’s the feeling of partnering, of working with another person over the gap of uncertainty that always existed, before, between themselves and their partner. That thought comes with a flicker of self-consciousness, something like envy immediately eclipsed by a surge of satisfaction part pride and part affection, but Mako’s focus is swinging around to fix on them and they can’t spare the time to pick their own emotions apart.

She recognizes them. They can feel that much clearly, in a surge of surprise that comes through the space they’re now sharing before she reels it back to deliberate reserve. It might be embarrassing, in other circumstances, they think, but they can’t remember right now why they should feel that way. This is what they should have been all along, what all those years of loneliness were leading them towards, and when they urge their information towards her it’s without anything as clear as words to carry it. It’s just communication, without the complexities of language or the distraction of a physical form to stand in their way, and they can feel it hit Mako’s awareness, can feel the burst of epiphany-like understanding that sweeps through her mind. There’s a pause of contemplation, a moment of thought; then gratitude, deliberately formed and absolutely sincere in the moment before she breaks off the connection. She’s reaching out towards her weapon partner, they can see the shift of her wavelength stretching to span the gap between herself and that fixed-point certainty next to her; but they’re falling back, relief unravelling the desperate connection they’ve been maintaining, and as they disintegrate into their component parts the best they can muster is the grace to let go with some kind of intention.

Newt loses his weapon form as fast as their Resonance gives way. Hermann returns to his body with a jolt, feeling as breathless as if the snap back into his most typical form is the physical blow in truth it feels in his psyche, and no sooner is he rasping an inhale that feels like the first he’s taken in minutes than the weight of metal clasping around his fingers disintegrates, fracturing apart as if made of so much brittle clay to spill to a puddle at the floor. The illumination expands from there, morphing and elongating into a mostly-human shape, until by the time the bright dims enough for Hermann to look without flinching it’s Newt there once more, sprawling on his back across the floor of the Academy hallway and looking as if he doesn’t intend to ever move again.

Hermann’s entire body hurts. It seems a minor miracle that he’s still upright at all; if he were to fall to the floor he’s absolutely certain he wouldn’t be able to rise again. But Newt is lying flat next to him, his mouth slack and nose bleeding scarlet and eyes so glazed with unfocus that Hermann isn’t entirely sure he’s conscious, and under the present circumstances it’s the impulse towards responsibility that takes control of the back of Hermann’s mind as an acceptable alternative to the helpless whimper of hurt he wants to offer.

“Newt,” Hermann says. “Newt, can you hear me?” He reaches into the pocket of his pants to fumble for the cloth he is sure is there; as soon as he has the handkerchief well in hand he’s bracing a hand at the floor next to Newt so he can lean in over the other without collapsing bodily on top of him. “Answer me, Newt.”

“Mmgh,” Newt says, somewhat incoherently around the cloth Hermann is pressing to his face. He blinks, grimaces, lifts his hand to touch against Hermann’s bracing against his nose. “Christ, Herms, how many of these do you carry with you? Are you, like. A handkerchief emporium, is that your secret side job?”

“Don’t complain,” Hermann tells him with more force on the words than he thought he would be able to muster, under the circumstances. “With you for a weapon I shall have to double my supply as it is.” Newt’s lashes dip, his gaze jumps up to meet Hermann’s; Hermann only manages to look at him for a moment before his mouth pulls onto a smile as the best alternate for the tears he thinks he might be shedding otherwise. Newt’s forehead creases, his mouth shifts as if to say something; and then the tension in his expression gives way to a laugh, and he lets Hermann urge his head farther back to go on ruining another one of his handkerchiefs.


	13. Relief

It is Mako who comes to find them, after.

Hermann hadn’t known who it would be. They are effectively trapped where they stopped, at the top of a flight of stairs too much for his aching knee and Newt’s shaky balance to bear; the only comfort left to them is knowing that they passed what information they happened to lay claim to, and that the rest of the fight is beyond their control. Even Newt’s frantic desire for combat seems to have passed, or his strength is too sapped to give him the energy to complain; he remains where Hermann urges him, lying flat on the hallway tile even long after the blood seeping from his nose has eased to no more than a stain against Hermann’s handkerchief. Hermann remains sitting up, only because he’s unsure he’ll have the strength to rise again if he gives in to laying down, and so he sees the approaching pair well before the sound of their footfalls give them away.

Mako is limping. Hermann can see that much at a distance, well before he can make out the details of her features; but he can see her soul wavelength too, shining as clear and bright as it did in the chaos of the battle at the front courtyard. It’s only for a moment, like an afterimage of the Perception he fell into during that span of being more than himself, of being everything he ever dreamt of and more, of being a whole when he had only been a half before. The memory is dizzying, like he’s suddenly recalling a limb he has been missing all his life, but Hermann doesn’t have time to linger over it; he’s lurching to reach for his cane, scrambling to lay hands to it even as he reaches to shake Newt’s shoulder.

“Newt,” he blurts. “Newt, they’re here.”

“What?” Newt groans. “Who’s here? If it’s the Kishin I think we probably should just give in, it seems fastest.” He braces himself on one elbow to push himself upright with a show of extreme effort as he squints down the stairs and towards the connecting hallway; and then he’s surging to his feet, stumbling upright with no consideration at all for the actual ability of his body. “Mako! Hey, Mako!”

“Hold _on_ ,” Hermann snaps, and pushes hard against his cane to get to his feet barely in time to catch at Newt’s elbow and keep him from toppling face-first down the sloping stairs before them. “Haven’t you had enough bruises for one day?” But Newt is waving his arm above his head, beaming as if the strength of his body has returned all at once, and when Mako lifts her hand to wave back without easing the lean she has on the young man at her side -- her weapon partner, Hermann assumes -- Newt draws away from Hermann’s steadying hold to actually attempt a stumbling stride down the stairs. He doesn’t make it far -- he clears all of two steps before he sits down hard and waits for their visitors to come to them -- but even so Hermann wishes he could trust himself enough to follow even that far to meet the pair that have come to collect them.

He doesn’t know how they make it to the Death Room. Surely Mako is limping badly enough to be well beyond the point of supporting anyone else, and her weapon partner is only one young man, however sturdily built he may be: but the partner in question offers his shoulder for Hermann’s support, and Newt seems to gain some surge of strength from sheer enthusiasm, regardless of his actual ability to stay on his feet. He and Mako hold onto each other the whole way to the Death Room, Newt talking a mile a minute and beaming bright as the sun, and if Mako is demonstrating somewhat more restraint she’s still smiling wider than Hermann has ever before seen from her, her whole face all but glowing with the relief of victory.

It’s chaos in the Death Room. It’s not that it’s raucous, exactly -- Hermann doesn’t think he has the strength to muster the enthusiasm the moment truly desires, even if Newt, at least, seems to be having no hesitation about returning to his usual exuberance even before he’s well on his own feet again -- but Hermann has never seen so many people in such a relatively small space. There are dozens in the crowd, students and graduates and Death Weapons and faculty and Stacker Pentecost himself, who meets them as soon as they come in the door with a clap against Hermann’s shoulder that nearly sends him sprawling to the floor again and a smile as bone-deep shocking as the laugh that spills from Mako at the look on Hermann’s face. Everyone is smiling, bright and disbelieving and haggard with relief, even those bearing bandages or leaning hard on their partner or just the nearest available support, and Newt and Hermann are swallowed up by the crowd as easily as Mako and Raleigh, absorbed into it as an assumed part of the victory with no more hesitation than the time it takes them to cross over the threshold.

Hermann loses track of Newt immediately. He still feels shaky on his feet, uncertain about trusting his own legs even with the cane he’s holding in a white-knuckled grip, but Raleigh is drawn aside as soon as they enter the doorway by a trio of brothers beaming all over their faces and Hermann doesn’t have time to feel lonely before the Kaidanovskys descend upon him, a Death Weapon and his meister wife who have never spared more than a glance to Hermann in all the time he’s known of them. They have words enough, now, although those seem to primarily be taking the form of the Russian Hermann doesn’t speak, and from their beaming smiles they don’t care any more about his comprehension than about what gratitude he tries to form in return. They are replaced by Mako, who meets Hermann with a hug so shocking it’s a good thing Hermann has his cane to keep him upright, and Herc, another Death Weapon, who is exuding something closer to relief than the overwhelming excitement permeating the air. Hermann navigates past them all, speaking and nodding without knowing what he’s saying and hardly to whom he’s saying it while some distracted part of his exhaustion-cracked thoughts wanders the room, following Newt’s flitting movement like the light trailing behind a firefly.

Newt is one of the frantic ones. He claps Pentecost on the shoulder like an old friend, and offers hugs to both Mako and Raleigh; he has a joke for Hannibal Chau, who Hermann has always found rather unsettling, and an exuberant handshake for the Kaidonovskys. Hermann maneuvers behind him, slowed by his aching leg and his own uncertainty, and always Newt is turning aside to skip to the next target of his interest before Hermann can quite reach him or decide what he might want to say. It seems impossible to find words to encompass what is flickering in Hermann’s thoughts, that drive that keeps him on his feet and moving when all he really wants is to sit down and rest his aching hip; but it’s even more impossible to let Newt walk away, to resign himself to distance and watch him move from afar.

Hermann catches up while Newt is talking to Tendo. Tendo’s grinning all over his face, exuding the same friendly cheer that Hermann has seen from him whether he’s welcoming new students into the Academy or covering for one or another class in the absence of one of the other faculty. He claps Newt’s hand in his, shaking with force enough that Hermann winces for the other’s balance, but Newt just shakes back, grinning as wide as Tendo if with something a little closer to mania than satisfaction under his expression.

“So,” Tendo’s saying as Hermann approaches. “Changed your mind about field work now that you’ve had a taste of it yourself?”

Newt shakes his head with force. “No way,” he says, his voice as bright as his eyes. “It was the best experience of my life!”

Tendo laughs at that and lifts a hand to gesture towards his face. “Might want to carry some spare glasses then,” he says. “Even in weapon form it’s nice to be able to see.”

“Choi!” That’s Pentecost, his voice carrying clear over the murmur of conversation filling the room; Tendo lifts his head to look before raising his hand to a desultory salute and turning back to grin at Newt.

“Congrats,” he says, and claps a hand to Newt’s shoulder in farewell before he turns to respond to Pentecost’s call. Newt waves him away, his whole face still shining with bright enthusiasm, and Hermann edges closer, moving into the space at Newt’s side left finally, startlingly empty by Tendo’s departure.

It takes Newt a moment to see him. He’s still looking out at the crowd, still turned half-away from Hermann’s approach; and Hermann doesn’t know what to say, now that the spill of conversation that has followed Newt since their arrival has fallen to silence. There is still sound all around them, cheers and laughter and the burble of enthusiastic conversation, but Hermann’s own words have fallen silent, all his sharp-edged retorts stripped away from him as if they fell free along with the weight of Newt’s weapon form sliding from his fingers. Hermann opens his mouth to speak -- to offer congratulations, or gratitude, or relief, anything at all that he can fit to the strange, aching space at the inside of his chest -- and Newt turns to look at him, looking back over his shoulder and straight at Hermann as if the other had shouted his name aloud.

For a minute they just stand there looking at each other. Newt’s eyes are still overbright and wide as if to compensate for his nearsightedness with intensity, but his smile has eased back from the vivid edge of too-much to soften into something that Hermann can’t put a name to but that aches at the inside of his chest like a fist is squeezing against his heart. Newt blinks at Hermann, his gaze lingering at the other’s face, and then his smile catches taut at his lips, and he reaches out to catch an arm around Hermann’s shoulders. The pressure catches Hermann off-guard and sends him tipping in against Newt next to him; his shoulder catches at the side of Newt’s shirt, his weight angling until Newt is doing at least as much to hold him upright as his cane, but Hermann doesn’t try to straighten any more than he tries to fight back the smile that spreads across his face like Resonance with Newt’s own.


	14. Pull

Newt walks Hermann back home.

It’s not that he offers so much as assumes. This isn’t new -- it’s a staple of their entire relationship up to now, Newt taking up residence in the structure of Hermann’s life whether invited or not -- but what is new is the adrenaline that Hermann thought he had spent over the course of the day that has reemerged to rush his heart a little faster and quiver his footsteps a little more unsteady. It’s still daylight out -- an impossibility, Hermann feels, when it’s been what seems a lifetime since he looked out the window of the Academy infirmary this morning -- and he makes full use of the extra illumination, keeping his head down and his gaze fixed on the pavement before him as he sets his uncertain feet with intention to make their very slow way down the streets of the city.

Newt isn’t fazed by Hermann’s nearly unbroken silence. Hermann isn’t entirely sure that Newt has even noticed that anything is different than usual; he’s been talking almost nonstop since he dropped his arm around Hermann’s shoulders in the Death Room, babbling incoherence at Hermann, at his conversational partner, at the air around him if nothing else will serve. The weight of his arm is gone, now, and Hermann is doing his level best to not think about how he feels about that same absence, but Newt’s voice is still continuing in a single, unbroken stream-of-consciousness, as if having finally shared the space of his thoughts with someone else he has entirely lost his ability to keep his inner monologue to himself.

“They’re going to have to rebuild the whole front of the school,” he’s saying now, speaking as quickly as if he means to make up for the necessarily slow pace that Hermann’s bad leg holds them to. “I mean they did great work holding off the Kishin, probably everyone understands that, but how long do you think people are going to be willing to wait before they expect everything to look pristine again? Not long enough, I bet. Stacker’s going to have to keep the Death Weapons around just to help with the politicking, probably.” Hermann glances sideways at Newt, started in spite of himself by this casual address of the head of the entire Academy, but Newt has already shifted subjects and is carrying down a new train of thought. “Do you think the Kishin’s presence is going to have a long-term effect on the city? It’s been building its forces for a while, after all, and no one has done any research on the effects of extended exposure to a Madness wavelength. Who knows what could result from it. If we didn’t have the whole of the Academy already here we could use some of them as a control group. Maybe we still could, if we look at the late-arriving meisters and compare them to the weapons who have been here from the start. Or do you think it could be affected by the age of the participants in the first place?”

“I have not the faintest guess on the subject,” Hermann answers, but Newt is racing on without hesitation.

“Maybe there’s a kind of resilience built up by people who live here long enough. Kishin Eggs are drawn to the Academy anyway and there are still plenty of people who choose to live in the city all the same, even if they’re not with the Academy itself. And there’s all the students too. Wouldn’t it be better to spread out our forces a little? You’d think that having all our eggs in one basket would make things a lot more risky. Then again it’s only because we had everyone in one place that we were able to win at all, I guess.” Newt coughs a laugh that seems to tear out of him more than being a conscious expression of emotion. “Who knows what could have happened today if we weren’t all in the right place at the right time.”

Hermann keeps his gaze on the street. “I’m sure we would have managed.”

“Oh sure,” Newt says at once, veering aside as if Hermann’s comment were an actual admonition instead of distracted agreement. “Somehow or another. The Academy always finds a way, that’s our motto. Or it should be. Do we even _have_ a motto?”

Hermann shuts his eyes for a breath. “I have no idea.”

“Something else for Stacker to worry about,” Newt says. He pauses for a moment -- Hermann thinks it’s the first time he’s taken a breath in the whole of their walk back from the Academy -- before drawing an audible inhale and speaking again, in the same overenthusiastic tone he’s been chirping since they made it clear of the Death Room and away from any eyes but each other’s. “Did that pizza place down this way close? I could really go for a slice right now, I’m not gonna lie. Do you think Resonance always makes weapons this hungry?”

Hermann sucks in a breath of air and speaks far faster than he intended. “You should come out to dinner with me.”

“That’s what I’m talking about,” Newt says without so much as missing a beat. “You too, right? I don’t know what’s open right now. What time is it, even? You’ve gotta have, I dunno, a pocketwatch on you or something, somewhere in your endless supply of handkerchiefs. If it’s past five we could--”

“No,” Hermann says, and stops walking. The halt is so abrupt that Newt’s anxious momentum carries him forward by another pair of strides before he can catch himself and look back at Hermann behind him. Their eyes meet for a moment, Newt’s wide and tense and Hermann’s set on intention; then Newt ducks his head to look away, and Hermann is left to pull a breath that feels like an earthquake against the too-taut strain all across his chest. He fills his lungs, and fixes his grip on his cane, and lifts his head to force out the words that are harder to say than anything else he managed in a whole list of impossible things he’s already accomplished this afternoon. “I--I am asking you out, Newt.” A beat for Hermann’s heart to thud panic in his chest. “On a date.”

Newt’s head swings back up, his eyes going as wide as if Hermann had lifted a hand to slap him. Hermann’s shoulders tense, his throat closes up on self-consciousness, but he doesn’t look away, _can’t_ look away, from that knocked-blank shock in Newt’s expression. It reminds him of the Academy infirmary, when Hermann had put voice to the word _partner_ and watched Newt topple backwards in time to the child he was when he last had a chance at that dream; watching that expression flicker illumination over Newt’s familiar features is gift enough to merit the sacrifice of whatever Hermann might be giving away on his own face.

“I,” Newt says, and then closes his mouth to work through a swallow, looking as focused on the response as if it requires actual attention. “Like. Romantically?”

Hermann huffs a breath that is as close as he can bring himself to exasperation with his heart pounding a drumbeat in his chest. “Insofar as I understand the premise, that is the goal of asking someone out on a date, yes.” Newt goes on staring at him, still looking as blank as if he doesn’t understand the words, and Hermann’s chest starts to go tighter as the stress of self-consciousness rises to crush his breath out of his lungs. “You’re under no obligation to say yes, Newt, if you want to refuse--” and Newt takes a huge step forward, and Hermann’s words die on his lips at the same time Newt’s hand comes up to catch at the back of his head. Hermann rocks back, breath catching on shock in his chest, but Newt is leaning in already, ducking across the gap between them with such speed that Hermann barely has time to register the fact of Newt so close in front of him before there is pressure at his mouth and friction urging close against his lips. Hermann stares for a moment, only kept on his feet by the cane at his side and the hand at his head, and then Newt pulls away, and it’s in seeing the soft of Newt’s mouth that Hermann identifies the warmth of a kiss clinging to his own.

“Sorry,” Newt blurts, his hand dropping from Hermann’s head as he rocks back onto his heels like he’s thinking about taking a step he doesn’t actually follow through on. “I mean. I didn’t think you would--I didn’t think _anyone_ would but especially you, Herms, do you know how long I’ve--” as his gaze slides from Hermann’s eyes to his mouth to the touch of his fingers at the side of the other’s collar, as his words tumble over half-formed sentences enough to spike Hermann’s interest without ever finishing the tantalizing declarations they begin. “This isn’t just the Resonance thing right? Because I think probably if the Madness got to you I shouldn’t, uh, take advantage of that, but to be honest I’m not sure I’d--” and then Hermann gets his hand up from where it’s hanging slack at his side, and grabs at a fist of Newt’s t-shirt, and Newt’s rambling speech is cut off by the weight of Hermann’s mouth crushing against his with far more force than what Newt offered. Newt makes some sound into Hermann’s mouth, something weak and shocked with heat, but Hermann is leaning in and when Newt stumbles backwards Hermann follows him, for once not caring about how clumsy his uneven strides are. They move fast, nearly a fall more than walking, and when Newt runs up against a wall it’s with force enough to knock the air from his lungs to a gust of heat that Hermann catches on his tongue before he comes in to pin Newt back to the wall and brace him still for the force of his mouth. The knuckles of his fist of Newt’s shirt press to the other’s chest, Newt’s mouth comes open under his lips, and when Hermann tastes against the give of the other’s tongue he can feel surrender in Newt’s body before the hand at his shoulder eases and comes up to clasp feather-light at the back of his neck.

Hermann has no idea how long they stand like that. Newt tastes like iron and salt and fevered heat, as if it’s his weapon form Hermann is tasting with each drag of his tongue, and Hermann can’t draw away, can’t pull away from the tiny plaintive noises Newt’s throat is giving him with each shift of his mouth. He feels like he’s shaking, like his whole body is gripped in the fist of some long-forming and finally breaking earthquake, rattling his bones and making him something brand-new instead of what he has been the whole of his life, but Newt is melting, falling back to the wall at his back and winding his fingers into Hermann’s hair and urging him on with every overheated breath they gasp between themselves. When Hermann comes back to himself his heart is pounding and he’s pulling so hard at Newt’s shirt he thinks the other is bearing as much of his weight as the cane clutched in his free hand; in front of him Newt’s lashes are heavy over the unfocus of his eyes and his breathing is coming so hot Hermann wants to go right back to what they were doing at once.

“I can hardly speak for _your_ mental state, Newton,” he says, in a voice only recognizable as his own from the edge that clings to the name that was always an insult before, that tastes nearly an endearment now. “But I am firmly in my right mind, and you have yet to answer my question.”

Newt’s lashes work in a way that absolutely should not be allowed anywhere, by anyone, except maybe in the privacy of his or Hermann’s home. “Oh,” he says, his voice quavering in the back of his throat. His fingers shift at Hermann’s neck, his touch dragging like he’s seeking traction before his fingertips find bare skin and steady there. He blinks again and ducks his head. “Yeah. Yes. Please.” His forehead creases; when he swallows Hermann can hear his throat working on the motion. “Can I keep kissing you now?”

Hermann can feel pressure in his throat, unfamiliar and tight enough to be tears, but when it breaks free it’s laughter at his lips, sharp and startled as a cough. “Yes,” he says, and shifts his hold on his cane so he can ease his grip on Newt’s shirt and brace against his shoulder instead. “Please.” Newt smiles, overbright and distractingly brilliant, and when he slides his hands up to cradle Hermann’s head Hermann shuts his eyes and lets himself be drawn back into the magnetic heat of Newt’s mouth against his own.


	15. Sync

“And that,” Hermann says, sweeping his chalk into a flourish underneath the last line of ruler-straight text he’s copied onto the blackboard, “Is the basic theory.” He sets the chalk back into its tray and dusts his fingertips against the front of his sweater before he turns back to face the waiting room. “Are there any questions?”

There is a murmur through the classroom, the sound of over two dozen students all shaking their heads or mumbling negation under their breath. Hermann still pauses to look over each face gazing back at him from the rows before him; however attentive they appear, he’d like to resolve any questions before they move on to the inevitable distraction of the next step. “Nothing? You all understand perfectly.” There are no flinching gazes, no self-conscious heads ducking away from the force of Hermann’s stare. Hermann takes a breath and sighs it into the outline of resignation.

“Very well,” he says, and turns to stride across the front of the classroom and before the blackboards now filled with the chalk dust of the theory they have been reviewing for the last half hour. He doesn’t pause when he gets to the edge of the raised surface from which he usually teaches, only slows to ease his footing and save himself from an embarrassing spill as he navigates the single step down to the floor of the classroom. No one moves in the whole of the room; the anticipation is so high Hermann imagines he can feel it crackling like electricity in the air even without turning to see the breathless excitement in the faces of the students behind him. The pressure hunches in his shoulders and tightens his hold at the handle of his cane, but when he lifts his hand to rap against the weight of the door before him the motion is the more direct for the strain in his body, the sound the crisper for the force he puts behind it.

“Newt!” Hermann calls through the shut door. “Are you ready to make your grand entrance yet?” There’s a pause, a moment’s delay accompanied by the sound of hasty footsteps, and Hermann takes a half-step back from the doorway so he is well clear of the motion of the door opening before it swings out and towards him. Newt tumbles through, moving so fast Hermann thinks the other might be in more danger of falling than anything else, but his head turns as soon as he’s through the entrance, his wide-eyed focus swinging around to land on Hermann even as he catches his footing back under himself.

“Hey babe,” he says, coming to stand upright as he lifts a hand to shove disarray through the tangle of his hair. “I got all caught up in one of those theory books you have. I still think they have the whole concept of Resonance all wrong, it’s not so much a link as a melding, I think, and it would really help explain some of the…” His gaze slides up and away from Hermann’s face to look out to the rest of the room. “Hey, you have a class!”

Hermann shuts his eyes and fights the urge to pinch at the bridge of his nose. “I do,” he says, in the most deliberately calm tone he can muster. “They are waiting for a live demonstration of Resonance, which you promised you would help me with _last night_. I can hardly believe how short-lived your attention span is.”

“There’s nothing wrong with my attention span,” Newt protests. “You were _very_ distracting last night, I don’t think I could have told you my name by the time we were done.”

Hermann can feel his entire face burn to instant heat, not aided by the ripple of laughter that breaks over the classroom even if it is hastily silenced. He doesn’t turn out to meet any of the eyes he can feel on himself; bad enough to face down the grin that Newt is giving him, the one that says too clearly that he’s doing this on purpose and is as entertained by Hermann’s reaction as by that of the considerable audience they have for their interaction. Hermann clears his throat and lifts his chin, bracing both hands at the handle of his cane set before him as if to make a wall between himself and Newt’s absolutely shameless affection.

“I hardly wish to make my students late for their next course, however little _you_ may care,” Hermann says, while Newt goes on grinning at him with absolutely no indication of self-consciousness at this response. “Do you think you could deign to transform for us sometime this afternoon, or should I call an end to the lecture early?”

“I wasn’t complaining,” Newt protests. “I just want to make sure responsibility is distributed evenly. Fairly.” Hermann raises an eyebrow and Newt rolls his eyes and waves a hand. “Fine, whatever, have it your way.” He turns on his heel to face the rows of students watching them and extends both hands wide as if a magician offering distraction from some obvious sleight-of-hand. “You all ready to see some Resonance?” There’s a murmur of sound from the audience, some half-hearted cheers as a handful of the students catch up to Newt’s pace; Hermann lowers his chin to fix Newt’s back with a glare, even with full awareness that such will be entirely ineffective even if Newt notices.

Newt drops his arms partway and looks out at the room again. “Come on, is that any way to get excited? Don’t you all want to try this yourself?” That gets a louder response, a chorus of _yes_ es that swells almost to a shout against the inside of the room, and Newt lifts his arms again. “What was that?” Again the affirmatives; Newt turns on his heel to sweep one arm towards Hermann. “Once more for our favorite professor!” A laugh, this time, as warm as Newt’s smile, and Newt drops his arms and strides back to Hermann’s side.

Hermann glares at him from the other side of the cane he’s still leaning into. “We are going to have _words_ about this later, Newt.” His speech is an undertone, soft so it will carry only to Newt’s ears; Newt’s responding laugh is not.

“I sure hope so,” he says, and then he ducks in before Hermann can react to press his mouth close to the other’s. There’s a hiss of an inhale that runs through the room, followed immediately by a handful of titters and one half-muffled squeal, and Newt immediately starts to transform, his physical form dissolving into light while Hermann’s mouth is still warm with the press of his lips. Hermann can feel himself blistering with the heat of the flush over his cheeks, can feel his whole body taut with self-consciousness, but his vision is glowing with light and his hand is going heavy as if with the weight of fingers interlacing with his own, and when Newt’s wavelength brushes against his it’s taut with all the barely-repressed strain of the other’s amusement.

 _Behave yourself_ , Hermann orders Newt, struggling for dominance while his face is still glowing like the sun. _I am_ teaching _. They’ll never respect me like this._

 _You’re fine_ , Newt soothes. _They like it. They like you. You gotta learn to read the room, dude_. Hermann lifts a hand from his cane to give Newt space to fit around his outstretched fingers; metal warm as a touch forms itself to the weight of rings around his hand. _Ready?_

 _Are you?_ Hermann thinks, and shuts his eyes while Newt is coughing a laugh into the shared space of their thoughts. His wavelength spreads out, melting out into the space around him as Newt’s glows sunlight-hot at his skin, and when he reaches out Newt is right there waiting for him. Hermann’s wavelength melds into Newt’s, shifting and reforming to make space for the other’s, and when the murmur of _love you_ spills through his thoughts he doesn’t know if it’s his own soul or Newt’s that put it there, and they both know it doesn’t make a difference.


End file.
